RUPERT  BROOKE 
A  MEMOIR 


BY 


EDWARD   MARSH 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

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RUPERT  BROOKE 

A   MEMOIR 


The 
COLLECTED   POEMS 

0/ 

RUPERT  BROOKE 

WITD  A 

PHOTOGRAVUUE  PORTRAIT 
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"It  ii  parked  with  the  ituff  of  whirh  poetry 
if  made:  vivid  imagination,  the  phra«e  that 
leapi  to  life,  youth,  music,  and  the  ecvtaijr 
born  o(  their  joy  when  geniui  keejM  them  com- 
pany."—fiU  Ovliook. 


JOHN     LANE    COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS  NEW    YORK 


•<h,-rrit  Srh.ll.  ri;,l,„;r.i  ,,r 


Km,,,,   \\:,n.rr.  ,,i 


Hi  Ti;  ur    Ki((M>Ki'; 
1  <>  1  ;; 


RUPERT   BROOKE 

A  MEMOIR 


BY 

EDWARD    MARSH 


NEW  YORK 
JOHN  LANE  COINIPANY 

MCMXVIII 


Copyright,  1918, 
Bt  John  Lane  Company 


Pr«9»  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ivra  Company 

New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


(cODl 

B7?/V13 

INTRODUCTIOX 

I  FEEL  that  an  apology  is  due  to  those  who  have 
been  looking  for  some  time  for  a  JNIemoir  of  my 
son.  The  chief  reason  for  the  delay  has  been 
my  great  desire  to  gain  the  collaboration  of  some 
of  his  contemporaries  at  Cambridge  and  during 
his  young  manliood,  for  I  believe  strongly  that 
they  knew  the  largest  part  of  him.  Up  to  now 
it  has  been  found  impossible  to  do  this,  much  as 
I  should  have  wished  it;  and  as  since  his  death 
many  of  them  have  also  laid  down  their  lives, 
there  is  no  longer  any  hope  of  doing  so  in  the 
future.  I  have  therefore  consented  to  the  Me- 
moir coming  out  now,  although  it  is  of  necessity 
incomplete.  I  cannot  speak  strongly  enough  of 
the  ability  and  loving  care  that  Mr.  Marsh  has 
given  to  the  work. 

M.  R.  B. 
April  1918 


onr.rA'*ip« 


NOTE 

This  Memoir  was  written  in  August,  1915,  a 
few  months  after  Rupert  Brooke's  death,  and 
my  intention  was  to  publish  it  with  his  collected 
ipoems  in  the  course  of  that  year.  Circumstances 
prevented  this,  and  now  that  three  years  have 
passed  I  ought  probably  to  rewrite  it  in  the 
changed  perspective  and  on  a  different  scale.  As 
this  is  impossible  for  several  reasons,  I  have  had 
to  be  contented  with  a  general  revision,  and  the 
addition  of  letters  which  have  since  come  into 
my  hands. 

I  am  very  grateful  to  his  ISIother  and  to  those 
of  his  friends  who  have  allowed  me  to  quote  from 
his  letters  and  from  their  accounts  of  him. 

E.  M. 

April,  1918. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Memoir         11 

Appendix 187 

"I  Strayed  About  the  Deck,  an  Hour,  To- 
night"     189 

The  Dance 190 

Song 190 

"Sometimes  Even  Now  ..." 191 

Sonnet:  In  Time  of  Revolt 192 

A  Letter  to  a  Live  Poet 192 

Fragment  on  Painters 194 

The  True  Beatitude 195 

Sonnet  Reversed 195 

The  Little  Dog's  Day 196 


RUPERT  BROOKE 

A   MEMOIR 


RUPERT  BROOKE 

A  MEMOIR 


Rupert  Brooke  was  born  at  Rugby  on  August 
3rd,  1887.  His  father  was  William  Parker 
Brooke,  a  Rugby  master,  son  of  Canon  Brooke 
of  Bath;  and  his  mother  was  Mary  Ruth  Cot- 
terill.     He  was  the  second  of  three  brothers.^ 

When  he  was  five  years  old  his  father  became 
Housemaster  of  School  Field,  which  was  his 
home  till  1910.  He  loved  the  house  and  the  gar- 
den, especially  his  own  particular  long  grass- 
path  with  borders  and  pergolas,  where  he  used 
to  walk  up  and  down  reading.  At  this  House 
he  entered  Rugby  in  1901,  from  the  preparatory 
school  at  Hillbrow,  and  next  year  won  a  scholar- 
ship. 

His  school  life  was  very  happy.     In  his  first 

*Dick,  who  was  six  years  older,  died  in  1907;  and  Alfred,  three 
years  younger,  was  killed  near  \'eniiflles  in  June,  1915,  serving  as 
a  lieutenant  in  the  Post  Office  Rifles. 

11 


12  RUPERT  BROOKE 

year  at  Cambridge,  reading  out  a  paper  on  INIod- 
ern  Poetry  ^vllic'll  he  had  written  at  the  end  of  his 
last  term  at  Rughy  for  the  Sch.ool  Soeiety  called 
'Epavos,  and  afraid  that  the  alarming  under- 
graduates might  think  it  sentimental,  he  excused 
himself  by  exphiining  the  circumstances  in  which 
he  wrote  it.  "I  had  been  ha])pier  at  Rugby," 
he  said,  "than  I  can  find  words  to  say.  As  I 
looked  back  at  five  years,  I  seemed  to  see  almost 
every  hour  golden  and  radiant,  and  always  in- 
creasing in  beauty  as  I  grew  more  conscious; 
and  I  could  not  (and  cannot)  hope  for  or  even 
quite  imagine  such  happiness  elsewhere.  And 
then  I  found  the  last  days  of  all  this  slipping 
by  me,  and  with  them  the  faces  and  places  and 
life  I  loved,  and  I  without  power  to  stay  them. 
I  became  for  the  first  time  conscious  of  tran- 
sience, and  parting,  and  a  great  many  other 
things." 

This  happiness  was  compounded  from  many 
sources:  friendship,  games  (he  played  for  the 
School  in  both  the  XI  and  the  XV),  and  books. 
He  was  a  balanced  combination  of  the  athletic 
and  the  intellectual  types  of  schoolboy — 'always 
with  a  ball  in  his  hand  and  a  book  in  his  pocket' 
is  a  vivid  little  description.  "Rupert"  (writes 
a  contemporary  in  the  Vlth  who  was  at  another 
house,  and  afterwards  became  an  Assistant  Mas- 


A  MEMOIR  13 

ter  * ) ,  "first  of  all  people  at  school  gave  me  an 
inkling  of  what  a  full  life  really  meant.  I  was 
an  awful  Philistine,  and  still  am,  I  fear;  but  he, 
with  no  appearance  of  superiority  or  attempt  at 
preaching,  as  keen  as  any  of  us  on  all  the  im- 
mensely important  events  in  school  life,  and  al- 
ways ready  for  a  rag,  impressed  us  as  no  one  else 
could  with  the  fact  that  these  things  were  not  all 
— not  even  the  most  important.  And  the  best 
thing  about  him  was  that  he  was  not  out  to  im- 
press us — it  was  just  being  himself." 

His  great  school-friend  Hugh  Russell- Smith, 
since  killed  in  action,  wrote  in  the  Rugby  paper, 
the  'JMeteor,'  when  he  died: — 

"For  the  first  two  or  three  j^ears,  I  think,  few 
of  us  realised  that  someone  out  of  the  ordinary 
had  come  among  us.  He  was  rather  shy  and 
quiet,  though  he  at  once  proved  himself  a  good 
athlete,  and  he  lived  much  the  same  life  as  any- 
one else.  Gradually,  however,  we  began  to  no- 
tice little  things  about  him.  Instead  of  coming 
'down  town'  with  us,  he  used  to  go  off  to  the 
Temple  Librarj^  to  read  the  reviews  of  books  in 
the  'Morning  Post'  and  'Chronicle.'  He  read 
Walter  Pater,  and  authors  we  knew  very  little 
about.     He  read  a  good  deal  of  poetrj%  and  he 

'  Hubert   Podmore,   who,   before   he   was   killed    in   action,   gave 
Mrs.  Brooke  leave  to  publish  this  extract  from  his  letter  to  her. 


14  RUPERT  BROOKE 

let  us  find  him  in  raptures  over  Swinburne.  He 
began  to  wear  his  hair  rather  longer  than  other 
})eople.  Still,  he  played  games  enthusiastically, 
and  helped  us  to  become  Cock  House  in  football 
and  in  cricket.  Gradually  most  of  us  in  the 
House  came  under  his  spell.  We  accepted  his 
literary  interests.  He  was  so  straightforward 
and  unaffected  and  natural  about  them,  and  he 
took  our  chaff  so  well,  that  we  couldn't  have 
hel})ed  doing  so.  Perhaps  they  amused  most  of 
us,  but  one  or  two — and  those  the  most  unlikely 
— were  occasionally  found  clumsily  trying  to  see 
what  there  really  was  in  such  things.  But  it  was 
his  personal  charm  that  attracted  us  most,  his 
very  simple  and  lovable  nature.  Few  could  re- 
sist it.  When  in  his  last  year  he  became  head 
of  the  House,  almost  everyone  came  under  the 
sway  of  his  personality.  It  seems  to  me  now,  as 
it  seemed  then,  that  there  really  was  a  spirit  in 
School  Field  which  made  it  rather  different  from 
any  other  House.  It  was  due,  I  believe,  partly 
to  Rupert,  partly  to  his  father.  The  situation 
might  have  been  difficult  for  both.  The  way  in 
which  things  actually  turned  out  shows  one  of 
the  most  delightful  sides  of  Rupert.  He  was  in 
all  things  more  than  loyal  to  his  father,  but  he 
never  made  it  awkward  for  the  rest  of  us.  His 
sense  of  fun  saw  him  through,  and  it  helped  us 


A  MEMOIR  15 

a  good  deal  to  know  that  lie  would  not  misin- 
terpret all  the  little  pleasantries  that  boys  make 
at  the  expense  of  their  Housemaster.  The  re- 
sult was  a  sort  of  union  between  the  Housemas- 
ter and  the  House,  which  made  very  much  for 
good. 

"Outside  the  House,  his  worth  was  realised  to 
the  full  by  some — by  the  Upper  Bench,  and  by 
a  few  of  the  INIasters  who  knew  and  loved  him. 
He  rose  to  a  high  place  in  the  Vlth,  won  two 
prizes  for  his  poems,  played  cricket  and  football 
for  the  School,  and  became  a  Cadet  Officer  in 
the  Corps.  But  I  think  he  was  never  a  school 
hero.  It  was  chiefly  his  House  that  knew  his 
lovableness.  And  when  he  was  at  Cambridge, 
I  think  he  always  loved  the  House  lunches,  which 
we  used  to  have  nearly  every  week.  The  last  let- 
ter I  had  from  him  was  one  in  which  he  was  talk- 
ing of  members  of  the  House  who  had  fallen  in 
the  war. 

"Rupert  had  an  extraordinary  vitality  at 
school,  which  showed  itself  in  a  glorious  enthu- 
siasm and  an  almost  boisterous  sense  of  fun — 
qualities  that  are  only  too  rare  in  combination. 
Of  his  enthusiasm  it  is  hard  to  speak;  we  knew 
less  about  it,  although  we  felt  it.  We  knew  much 
more  of  his  glorious  fooling — in  his  letters,  in  his 
inimitable  and  always  kind  burlesques  of  mas- 


IG  RUPERT  BROOKE 

ters  or  boys,  in  his  parodies  of  himself.  He 
seemed  almost  always  ready  for  laughter.  It  is 
often  the  small  tilings  that  stand  out  most  vividly 
in  one's  mind.  I  see  Rupert  singing  at  the  very 
top  of  his  voice,  with  a  magnificent  disregard  for 
tune,  the  evening  hynm  we  used  to  have  so  often 
at  Bigside  Prayers.  I  see  him  rushing  on  to  the 
Close  to  release  a  sheep  that  had  become  entan- 
gled in  one  of  the  nets.  I  see  him  tearing  across 
the  gi'ass  so  as  not  to  be  late  for  Chapel.  I  gen- 
erally think  of  him  with  a  book.  He  had  not  yet 
developed  that  love  of  the  country  and  that  pas- 
sion for  swimming  with  which  the  friends  of  his 
Grantchester  days  associate  him.  He  used  to 
read,  when  we  used  to  walk  or  bathe.  But  what- 
ever he  was  doing  or  wherever  he  was,  he  was 
always  the  same  incomparable  friend.  He  has 
often  quoted  to  me  a  verse  of  Hilaire  Belloc: 

From  quiet  homes  and  first  beginning, 

Out  to  the  undiscovered  ends, 
There's  nothing  worth  the  wear  of  winning, 

But  laughter  and  the  love  of  friends. 

How  much  Rupert  loved  Rugby  while  he  was 
there,  I  know;  and  I  know  too  how  much  those 
who  knew  him  there  loved  him." 

The  letters  which  he  wTote  in  his  last  year  at 
school  are  radiant.    "I  am  enjoying  everything 


A  MEMOIR  IT 

immensely  at  present.  To  be  among  500  people, 
all  young  and  laughing,  is  intensely  deliglitful 
and  interesting.  .  .  .^  I  am  seated  on  the  top- 
most pinnacle  of  the  Temple  of  Joy.  Wonder- 
ful things  are  happening  all  around  me.  Some 
day  when  all  the  characters  are  dead — they  are 
sure  to  die  young — I  shall  put  it  all  in  a  book. 
I  am  in  the  midst  of  a  beautiful  comedy — with 
a  sense  of  latent  tears — and  the  dramatic  situa- 
tions work  out  delightfully.  The  rest  are  only 
actors;  I  am  actor  and  spectator  as  well,  and  I 
delight  in  contriving  effective  exits.  The  world 
is  of  gold  and  ivory.  .  .  .  How  is  London? 
Here  the  slushy  roads,  grey  skies,  and  epidemic 
mumps  cannot  conceal  a  wonderful  beauty  in  the 
air  which  makes  New  Big  School  almost  bear- 
able." And  in  the  summer:  "I  am  infinitely 
happy.  I  am  WTiting  nothing.  I  am  content  to 
live.  After  this  term  is  over,  the  world  awaits. 
But  I  do  not  now  care  what  will  come  then. 
Only,  my  present  happiness  is  so  great  that  I 
fear  the  jealous  gods  will  requite  me  afterwards 
with  some  terrible  punishment,  death  perhaps 
—or  life." 

'Work'  was  only  one  of  tlie  lesser  elements 
which  went  to  make  up  all  this  joy.     He  got  a 

*  Throughout  this  book,  three  dots  mean  that  there  are  dots  in 
the  original  letters;  six,  tliat  something  is  omitted. 

/ 


18  RUPERT  BROOKE 

fair  number  of  prizes,  and  went  to  King's  with  a 
scholarship:  but  lessons  seem  to  have  been  almost 
the  only  thing  he  didn't  as  a  rule  care  for.  He 
would  have  liked  to  read  the  books  as  books,  but 
grammar  irked  him.  When  he  came  to  'extra 
work'  for  the  scholarship  examination,  he  en- 
joyed it.  "This  introduces  me  to  many  authors 
whom  the  usual  course  neglects  as  'unclassical.' 
.  .  .  Theocritus  almost  compensates  me  for  all 
the  interminable  dullness  of  Demosthenes  and 
the  grammars  on  other  days.  I  never  read  him 
before.  I  am  wildly,  madly  enchanted  by  him." 
He  never  became  an  accurate  scholar,  and  though 
he  enjoyed  certain  authors,  and  had  a  special  love 
for  Plato,  I  don't  think  Greek  and  Latin  phiyed 
the  part  in  his  development  which  might  have 
been  expected. 

His  voluntary  reading,  at  school  and  after- 
wards, was  mainly  English — (juantities  of  prose, 
but  still  more  poetry,  in  which  his  taste  was  very 
comprehensive;  and  his  zealous  interest  in  con- 
temporary work  had  already  begun.  A  paper 
on  Modern  Poetry,  which  he  read  to  the'Epoiw 
Society,  presses  on  his  hearers  Kij)ling,  Henley, 
Watson,  Yeats,  A.  E.,  and Ernest  Dow- 
son.  This  brings  us  to  his  amusing  phase  of 
*decadence.'  From  1905  till  well  into  his  second 
year  at  Cambridge  he  entertained  a  culte   (in 


A  MEMOIR  19 

such  intensity,  somewhat  helated)  for  the  htera- 
ture  that  is  now  called  'ninetyish' — Pater/ 
Wilde,  and  Dowson.  This  was  a  genuine  en- 
thusiasm, as  anyone  may  see  from  his  earliest 
published  work,  especially  the  poems  written  in 
the  alexandrine  of  'Cynara,'  of  which  the  'Day 
that  I  have  loved'  is  the  cuhiiination.  But  he 
loved  to  make  fun  of  it,  and  of  himself  in  it;  for 
all  through  his  life  his  irony  played  first  on  him- 
self. Here  is  the  setting  of  a  dialogue:  "The 
Close  in  a  purple  evening  in  June.  The  air  is 
full  of  the  sound  of  cricket  and  the  odour  of  the 
sunset.  On  a  green  bank  i??^j9^rf  is  lying.  There 
is  a  mauve  cushion  beneath  his  head,  and  in  his 
hand  E.  Dowson's  collected  poems,  bound  in  pale 
sorrowful  green.  He  is  clothed  in  indolence  and 
flannels.  Enter  Arthur/'  'Good-morrow,'  says 
Arthur.  'AVhat  a  tremulous  sunset!'  But  that 
is  all  he  is  allowed  to  say.  Rupert  proceeds  with 
an  elaborately  'jewelled'  harangue,  ending  'I 
thank  you  for  this  conversation.    You  talk  won- 

*  A  little  parody  with  which  he  won  a  Westminster  Gazette  prize 
in  1007  may  be  worth  preserving  here:  "From  'Marine  the  Bank 
Clerk/  by  Walter  Pater  (Book  II.  Chap,  ix.,  'Procrastination'). 
Well!  it  was  there,  as  lie  beat  upon  the  station  pate  (that  so  sym- 
bolic barrier!)  and  watched  the  receding  train,  that  tiie  idea  came 
upon  him;  CfLSting,  as  it  were,  a  veil  of  annoyance  over  the  vague 
melancholy  of  his  features;  and  filling,  not  without  a  certain 
sedate  charm,  as  of  a  well-knf»wn  ritual,  his  mind  with  a  now 
familiar  sense  of  loss — a  very  de-fideriuin  -n  sense  only  momentar- 
ily perceptililc,  perhaps,  among  the  otiier  emotions  and  thoughts, 
that  swarmed,  like  silver  doves,  about  his  brain." 


20  RUPERT  BROOKE 

derfiilly.  I  love  listening  to  epigrams.  I  won- 
der if  the  deiid  still  delight  in  epigrams.  I  love 
to  think  of  myself  seated  on  the  greyness  of 
Lethe's  banks,  and  showering  ghosts  of  epigrams 
and  shadowy  paradoxes  upon  the  assembled 
wan-eyed  dead.  We  shall  smile,  a  little  wearily 
1  think,  remembering.  .  .  .  Farewell.'  'Fare- 
well,' says  poor  Arthur,  opening  his  mouth  for 
the  second  time — and  eo'it. 

"I  am  busy  with  an  enormous  romance,  of 
which  I  have  written  five  chapters.  It  begins 
with  my  famous  simile  ^  about  the  moon,  but  soon 
gets  much  more  lewd.  One  of  the  chief  char- 
acters is  a  dropsical  leper  whose  limbs  and  fea- 
tures have  been  absorbed  in  one  vast  soft  paunch. 
He  looks  like  a  great  human  slug,  and  he  croaks 
infamous  little  songs  from  a  wee  round  mouth 
with  yellow  lips.    The  others  are  less  respectable. 

"Did  you  see  the  bowdlerised  decadent?^  I 
suppose  the  scenery  looked  extremely  valuable. 
I  dare  not  witness  it.  Nero  is  one  of  the  few 
illusions  I  have  left.  All  my  others  are  depart- 
ing one  by  one.  I  read  a  book  recently  which 
proved  that  Apollo  was  an  aged  Chieftain  who 
lived  in  Afghanistan  and  had  four  wives  and 
cancer  in  the  stomach ;  and  the  other  day  I  found 

*This  was  as  follows: — "The  moon  was  like  an  enormous  yellow 
scab  on  the  livid  flesh  of  some  leper." 
'Nero  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre. 


A  MEMOIR  21 

myself — ^my  last  hope! — acting  on  moral  prin- 
ciples." 

"This  morning  I  woke  with  ophthalmia,"  he 
wrote  in  another  letter,  "one  of  the  many  dis- 
eases raging  through  Riighy.  It  is  all  owing  to 
a  divine  mistake.  I  wanted  to  get  rose-rash,  be- 
ing both  attracted  by  the  name  and  desirous  to 
have  the  disease  over  before  the  time  of  the  Ital- 
ian 'tour'  came.  Therefore  yestre'en  I  prayed  to 
^Esculapius  a  beautiful  prayer  in  Sapphics — it 
began,  I  think,  luepos  vvv  karl  pbbois  -KvpkTTtLv, .  .  .  but 
either  my  Greek  was  unintelligible,  or  the  names 
of  ills  have  changed  since  iEsculapius,  for  I 
awoke  and  found  the  God  had  sent  me  this,  the 
least  roseate  of  diseases." 

He  wished,  of  course,  or  rather  wished  to  be 
thought  to  wish,  to  shock  and  astonish  the  re- 
spectable; but  he  did  not  in  practice  go  very  far 
in  that  diretcion.  His  hair,  slightly  longer  than 
usual,  has  already  been  mentioned.  Ties  might 
not  be  coloured;  but  there  was  no  rule  against 
their  being  'pufF'  and  made  of  crepe  de  chine; 
and  such  ties  he  wore,  as  did  the  other  school 
swells.  It  was  amusing  to  cause  a  flutter  in  the 
orthodox  School  Societies,  of  which  he  was  really 
an  active  and  enthusiastic  member,  though  one 
might  not  think  so  from  his  accounts  of  their 
proceedings.    "Last  Sunday  I  read  a  little  paper 


22  RUPERT  BROOKE 

on  Atalantn,  and  Mas  mightily  pleased.  The 
usual  papers  we  have  are  on  such  subjects  as 
Hood  or  Calverley — 'something  to  make  you 
laugh.'  ...  I  saw  my  opportunity,  and  took  it. 
*IIave  I  not,'  I  said,  'many  a  time  and  oft  been 
bored  beyond  endurance  by  such  Phili.stines? 
Now  my  revenge  comes;  I  shall  be  merciless!' 
So  I  prepared  a  very  long  and  profound  paper, 
full  of  beautiful  ({notations,  and  read  it  to  them 
for  a  long  time,  and  they  were  greatly  bored. 
They  sat  round  in  chairs  and  slumbered  uneasily, 
moaning  a  little;  while  I  in  the  centre  ranted 
fragments  of  choruses  and  hurled  epithets  upon 
them.  At  length  I  ended  with  Mcleager's  last 
speech,  and  my  voice  was  ahnost  husky  with 
tears;  so  that  they  woke,  and  wondered  greatly, 
and  sat  up,  and  yawned,  and  entered  into  a  dis- 
cussion on  Tragedy,  wherein  I  advanced  the  most 
wild  and  heterodox  and  antinomian  theories,  and 
was  very  properly  squashed.  So,  you  see,  even 
in  Rugby  the  Philistines  don't  get  in  their  own 
way  always." 

"I  am  finishing  my  paper  on  James  Thomson.^ 
I  have  cut  out  all  the  wicked  parts,  but  I  still 
fear  for  the  reception.  Last  week  we  had  a  pa- 
per on  T.  Gray.    The  stupendous  ass  who  wrote 

'  He  had  'ransacked  the  eight  bookshops  in  Ch.iring  Cross  Road' 
for  lliomson's  works.  (This  is,  of  course,  the  author  of  the  City 
of  Dreadful  Night,  not  of  the  Secuons.) 


A  MEMOIR  23 

and  read  it,  after  referring  to  the  Elegy  as  'a 
fine  lyric,'  ended  with  the  following  inc'onij)ura- 
ble  words:  'In  conclusion,  we  may  give  Gray  a 
place  among  the  greatest,  above  all,  except  per- 
haps Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Tennyson.'  This 
lewd  remark  roused  me  from  the  carefully- 
studied  pose  of  irritating  and  sublime  noncha- 
lance which  I  assume  on  such  ocasions.  I  arose, 
and  made  acid  and  quite  unfair  criticisms  of 
Gray  and  Tennyson,  to  the  concealed  delight  of 
all  the  avowed  Philistines  there,  and  the  open 
disgust  of  the  professing  'lovers  of  literature.' 
I  was  nearly  slain." 

He  wTote  quantities  of  poetry  at  Rugby,  a  very 
little  of  which  he  thought  worth  preserving  in 
the  '1905-1908'  section  of  his  first  book.  Some 
of  it  appeared  in  the  Pliwnix,  a  free-lance  school 
paper  of  which  he  was  twin-editor,  and  some  in 
the  Venture,  which  succeeded  the  Phwnix.  His 
verse  of  this  time  shows  a  good  ear,  and  a  love 
of  'beautiful'  words,  but  not  much  else.  A  good 
deal  of  it  was  written  when  he  ought  to  have  been 
otherwise  employed.  "I  shall  sit  in  a  gondola," 
he  wrote  when  he  was  going  to  Venice  in  April, 
1906,  "and  pour  forth  satires  in  heroic  verse,  or 
moral  diatribes  in  blank  verse.  Intense  sur- 
roundings always  move  me  to  "wtMg  in  an  op- 
posite vein.    I  gaze  on  the  New  Big  School,  and 


24  RUPERT  BROOKE 

give  utterance  to  frail  diaphanous  lyrics,  sudden 
and  beautiful  as  a  rose-petal.  And  when  I  do 
an  hour's  'work'  with  the  Headmaster,  I  fill  note- 
books with  erotic  terrible  fragments  at  which 
even  Sappho  would  have  blushed  and  trembled." 

In  1904<  he  was  given  an  extra  prize  for  a  poem 
on  The  Pyramids,  and  next  year  he  won  the  real 
prize  with  one  on  The  Bastile,  which  he  recited  on 
June  24th.  "The  speeches  were  rather  amusing. 
I  am  informed  that  my  effort  was  one  of  the  only 
two  audible;  and  as  the  other  was  in  a  foreign 
tongue,  I  carried  off  the  honours.  I  am  also  told 
— by  a  cricketer  friend  of  mine — that  half  the 
audience  were  moved  to  laughter,  the  other  half 
to  tears,  which  I  regard  as  a  compliment,  though 
I  can  understand  the  feelings  of  neither  half. 
Anyhow  I  got  a  Browning  and  a  Rossetti  out  of 
it,  which  is  something,  though  they  are  in  prize- 
binding." 

Next  year  he  had  to  fall  back  on  prose.  "I 
have  undertaken  to  write  an  Essay  for  a  prize. 
If  I  win  this  I  shall  stand  up  next  Speech  Day 
and  recite  weird  'historical'  platitudes  to  a  vast 
slumbrous  audience.  The  idea  is  so  pleasingly 
incongruous  that  I  desire  to  realize  it.  More- 
over, I  once  airily  told  a  pedantic  and  aged  man 
that  if  I  liked  I  could  understand  even  History, 


A  MEMOIR  25 

and  he,  scoffing,  stirred  my  pride  to  prove  it. 
Therefore  I  am  going  to  write  an  Essay  on  "The 
Influence  of  William  III.  on  England.'  Of 
William  III.  I  know  very  little.  He  was  a  King, 
or  something,  they  say,  of  the  time  of  Congreve 
and  Wycherley.  Of  England  I  know  nothing. 
I  thought  you  might  aid  me  in  a  little  matter  like 
this.  If  ever  you  have  written  an  epic,  a  mono- 
graph, an  anthology,  or  a  lyric  on  William  III., 
please  send  it  to  me  that  I  may  quote  it  in  full." 
He  won  the  prize  (the  King's  Medal  for  Prose)  ; 
and  as  he  got  into  the  XI.  at  about  the  same 
time,  he  left  Rugby  with  honours  thick  upon 
him. 


II 


His  first  year  at  King's  (1906-7)  was  rather 
unsatisfactory.  He  regretted  Rugby;  and  he 
was  (as  always)  rather  shy,  and  (for  the  first 
and  only  time)  a  little  on  the  defensive  with  the 
strange  people.  The  'decadent'  pose  lingered; 
he  had  Aubrey  Beardsleys  in  his  room,  sat  up 
ver}^  late,  and  didn't  get  up  in  the  morning.  He 
thought  it  right  to  live  entirely  for  the  things 
of  the  mind;  his  passion  for  the  country  had  not 
yet  begun,  and  it  seemed  to  him  a  wicked  waste 
of  time  to  walk  or  swim — two  things  which  came 


2G  RUPERT  BROOKE 

soon  afterwards  to  give  him  as  much  pleasure 
as  anytliing  in  the  world. 

His  letters  are  plaintive:  "This  place  is  rather 
funny  to  watch;  and  a  little  wearying.  .  .  .  At 
certain  moments  1  perceive  a  ])leasant  kind  of 
])eace  in  tlie  grey  ancient  walls  and  green  lawns 
among  which  I  live;  a  quietude  that  doesn't  com- 
pensate for  the  things  I  have  loved  and  left,  but 
at  times  softens  their  outlines  a  little.  If  only  I 
were  a  poet,  I  should  love  such  a  life  very  greatly, 
'remembering  moments  of  passion  in  tranquil- 
lity' ;  but  being  first  and  chiefly  only  a  boy,  I  am 
restless  and  unable  to  read  or  write.  .  .  .  These 
people  are  often  clever,  and  always  wearying. 
The  only  persons  I  ever  make  any  effort  to  see 
are  two  who  came  up  with  me  from  my  House 
at  Rugby.  Here  across  the  Styx  we  wander 
about  together  and  talk  of  the  upper  world,  and 
sometimes  pretend  we  are  children  again." 

He  joined  the  A.U.C.,  and  played  Stingo  in 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer;  but  his  chief  public  ap- 
pearance in  his  first  term  was  in  the  Greek  play, 
the  Ewmenides.  "The  idea  of  my  playing 
Hermes  fell  through,"  he  wrote  to  his  Mother, 
"but  they  have  given  me  the  equally  large  part 
of  the  Herald.  I  stand  in  the  middle  of  the 
stage  and  pretend  to  blow  a  trumpet,  while  some- 
body in  the  wings  makes  a  sudden  noise.     The 


A  MEMOIR  27 

part  is  not  difficult."  "I  wear  a  red  wig  and 
cardboard  armour,"  he  wrote  in  another  letter, 
"and  luckily  am  only  visible  for  a  minute."  It 
turned  out  that  he  was  one  of  the  successes  of 
the  evening.  His  radiant,  youthful  figure  in  gold 
and  vivid  red  and  blue,  like  a  Page  in  the  Ric- 
cardi  Chapel,  stood  strangely  out  against  the 
stuffy  decorations  and  dresses  which  jDcrvaded 
those  somewhat  palmy  days  of  the  Cambridge 
Theatre.  After  eleven  years,  the  impression  is 
still  vivid. 

At  the  beginning  of  next  term  his  elder 
brother  died  suddenly.  They  were  very  fond  of 
each  other,  and  this  was,  I  suppose,  his  first  great 
sorrow.  "It  seems  so  strange  that  you  haven't 
heard,"  he  wrote.  "I  had  thought  that  all  the 
world  must  know.  I  suppose  I  ought  to  have 
written  and  told  you;  but  there  were  so  many 
letters  to  write;  and  I  had  to  try  to  comfort 
^lother  a  little.  Dick  died  on  Sunday  the  13th 
after  a  week's  illness.  Father  was  with  him — 
but  I  don't  think  details  matter  much.  ...  I 
came  up  here  on  Tuesday,  partly  to  escape  my 
Rugby  school-friends,  and  partly  that  I  might  be 
alone." 

"I'm  rather  wretched  and  ill,"  he  writes  a  lit- 
tle later.  "In  my  'literary  life'  I  have  taken  the 
last  step  of  infamy,  and  become — a  reviewer  I 


28  RUPERT  imOOKE 

I've  undertaken  to  'do'  great  slabs  of  minor 
poetry  for  the  Cambridge  Kevicw.  I've  read 
volumes  of  them,  all  the  same,  and  all  exactly 
the  stuff  /  write.  I  often  wonder  whether  I 
haven't  written  several  of  them  myself  under  a 
pseudonym,  and  forgotten  about  it." 

In  his  first  I^ong  Vacation,^  "I  work  hundreds 
of  hours  a  day,"  he  MTites,  "at  stuffy  classics,  and 
ooze  with  grammar.  To  save  my  soul,  I  write 
thousands  of  poems  in  the  evening,  and  burn 
them.  I'll  quote  to  you  one  verse  of  an  im- 
mensely long  one  in  six  cantos,  entitled  'A  Song 
Illustrative  of  a  Sense  of  Incompatibility  be- 
tween Self  and  Universe;  also  In  Favour  of  De- 
cease.' 

Things  are  beasts, 

Alas  !  and  Alack ! 
If  life  is  a  succession  of  choreic  anapaests, 
When,  ah!  when  shall  we  arrive  at  the  Paroemiac?" 

Part  of  this  Long  was  spent  at  Lulworth, 
where  he  wrote  to  his  Mother:  "One  day  we 
were  reading  on  the  rocks,  and  I  had  a  Keats  in 
my  pocket,  and  it  slipped  out,  and,  falling  into  a 
swift  current,  was  borne  out  to  sea.  So  we  leapt 
into  a  boat  and  rowed  up  and  down  the  coast 

*I  may  as  well  mention  that  I  first  met  him  just  after  the  end 
of  the  May  Term  this  year.  After  this  I  saw  him  at  intervals,  and 
we  knew  each  other  pretty  well  by  the  summer  of  1909, 


A  MEMOIR  29 

till  we  espied  it  off  some  rocks.  But  the  sea  was 
rather  rough  and  we  could  not  land  on  that  rocky- 
part,  or  get  near  Keats.  So  we  landed  half  a 
mile  off  on  a  heach,  and  came  over  the  rocks  to 
the  Keats;  and  when  we  found  it,  I  stripped  and 
went  in  after  it  and  got  it.  It  is  indeed  quite 
spoilt;  but  it  only  cost  two  shillings  to  begin 
with."  (He  did  not  know  at  this  time  of  an  as- 
sociation which  he  discovered  four  years  after- 
wards. "Oh,  I've  read  Keats,"  he  writes  in  1911, 
"and  found  the  most  am.vzing  thing.  The  last 
place  he  was  in  was  Lulworth.  His  ship  was  be- 
calmed outside.  He  and  Severn  went  ashore  and 
clambered  about  the  rocks  all  day — his  last  fairly 
happy  day.  He  went  aboard  and  \^Tote,  that 
evening,  his  last  poem — that  sonnet.  The  ship 
took  him  on  to  Italy,  coughing  blood  and  suf- 
fering Hell  because  he  wouldn't  see  Fanny  any 
more.  Fanny  sat  in  Hampstead,  with  jMr. 
Brown.  It  was  at  the  end  of  Sept.  1820  .  .  .") 
There  is  a  gloomy  letter  of  the  day  after  his 
birthday,  when  he  became  twenty.  "I  am  now 
in  the  depths  of  despondency  because  of  my  age. 
I'm  filled  with  an  hysterical  despair  to  think  of 
fifty  dull  years  more.  I  hate  myself  and  every- 
one. I've  written  almost  no  verse  for  ages;  and 
shall  never  write  any  more.  I've  forgotten  all 
rhythm  and  metre.  The  words  'anapaestic  dimeter 


80  RUPERT  BROOKE 

acatalcctic,'  that  fired  me  once,  now  leave  me  cold. 
The  sunset  or  a  child's  face  no  longer  reminds  me 
of  a  bucolic  caesura.  Rut  I  still  read  plaintively, 
to  pass  the  time."  And  he  can  still  write  at  the 
end  of  this  Long:  "Go  back  to  Cambridge  for 
my  second  year  and  laugh  and  talk  with  those 
old  dull  people  on  that  airless  plain  I  The 
thought  fills  me  with  hideous  ennui." 

But  this  mood  was  already  something  of  a  lit- 
erary survival,  and  well  understocxl  to  be  so  by 
his  friends.  He  went  back  to  games,  especially 
f(jotball ;  and  by  the  beginning  of  his  second  year 
he  had  become  one  of  the  most  interested  and  in- 
teresting people  at  Cambridge. 

A  young  Apollo,  golden-haired. 

Stands  dreaming  on  the  verge  of  strife, 

AlagnLficently   unjjrepared 

For  the  long  littleness  of  life. 

Mrs.  Cornford's  ei)igram  on  him  is  well  known, 
but  one  could  not  write  about  his  great  days  at 
Cambridge  without  quoting  it — bitter  though  the 
irony  of  'long'  has  now  become. 

Henceforward  friends  and  avcx^ations  crowded 
on  him.  He  had  been  the  chief  advocate  of  the 
Labour  Party  at  Rugby;  and  at  King's  he  joined 
various  societies,  political  and  intellectual,  mostly 
more     or    less     revolutionary — the     University 


A  MEMOIR  81 

Fabian  Society,  of  which  he  became  President 
for  the  year  1909-10;  the  Carbonari;  and  the 
Heretics.  He  also  belonged  to  that  old,  great, 
secret,  but  vaguely  famous  Brotherhood  from 
which  the  membership  of  Tennyson  and  others 
of  the  illustrious  has  lifted  a  corner  of  the  veil. 
J.  T.  Sheppard,  Fellow  of  King's,  gives  an  ac- 
count of  some  among  these  activities.  "The  Car- 
bonari, I  think,  he  founded;  a  Society  which,  in 
spite  of  its  terrifying  name,  was  very  friendly. 
The  paper  and  the  talk  which  followed  it  at  the 
one  meeting  to  which,  as  an  elderly  person,  I 
was  allowed  admission,  were  frank  and  amusing, 
but  my  chief  memory  is  of  the  cheerful  kindli- 
ness of  the  members.  Then  there  were  the  Fa- 
bians, whom  he  sometimes  entertained  to  a  frugal 
supper  of  bread  and  cheese  and  beer  in  his  rooms, 
and  to  whom  he  never  tired  of  teaching  the  im- 
portance of  poets  and  artists  in  the  good  society 
which  is  to  be  built  up  by  our  children.  His  ad- 
vice to  the  State  was  very  practical.  Since  poets 
and  artists  matter,  and  since  they  need  time  for 
development,  we,  who  are  not  the  poets  and  the 
artists,  ought  to  organise  the  material  requisites, 
bread  and  cheese  and  leisure,  for  those  who  seem 
to  show  the  promise  of  good  work.  He  believed 
that  you  do  not  improve  a  poet  by  starving  and 
neglecting  him;  and  one  good  way  of  showing 


32  RUPERT  BROOKE 

that  we  remember  him  would  be  to  remember  also 
that  it  is  our  duty  to  buy  as  well  as  read  the  works 
of  the  poets  who  are  still  writing." 

Rupert  indeed  wore  his  Socialism  with  a  dif- 
ference, which  comes  out  in  a  letter  of  December, 
1907,  thanking  his  uncle,  ]SIr.  Clement  Cotterill, 
for  his  book.  Human  Justice  for  those  at  the  Bot- 
tom, in  which  he  says  that  he  has  been  urging  his 
Socialist  friends  at  Cambridge,  especially  the  Fa- 
bians, to  take  a  more  human  view  of  things.  "So- 
cialism is  making  great  advances  at  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  just  now;  but  its  upholders  are  too 
apt  to  make  it  seem,  to  others  and  to  themselves, 
a  selfish  scheme  of  economics.  They  confound 
the  means  with  the  end;  and  think  that  a  Com- 
pulsory Living  Wage  is  the  end,  instead  of  a 
good  beginning.  Bernard  Shaw  came  down  last 
term,  and  made  a  speech  that  was  enthusiastically 
received,  in  which  he  advised  a  state  of  things 
in  which  each  'class'  had  its  own  party  in  Parlia- 
ment fighting  for  its  own  hand.  The  whole  thing 
was  based  on  selfishness.    It  was  not  inspiring. 

"Of  course  they're  really  sincere,  energetic, 
useful  people,  and  they  do  a  lot  of  good  work. 
But,  as  I've  said,  they're  rather  hard.  Must 
every  cause  lose  part  of  its  ideal,  as  it  becomes 
successful?  And  also  they  are  rather  intolerant, 
especially  towards  the  old  order.      They  some- 


A  MEMOIR  38 

times  seem  to  take  it  for  granted  that  all  rich 
men,  and  all  Conservatives  (and  most  ordinary 
Liberals)  are  heartless  villains.  I  have  already, 
thanks,  in  part,  to  some  words  of  yours,  got  some 
faith  in  the  real,  sometimes  overgrown,  goodness 
of  all  men;  and  that  is  why  I  have  found  your 
book  so  good,  as  a  confirmation  rather  than  a 
revelation.  And  this  faith  I  have  tried  to  ham- 
mer into  those  Socialists  of  my  generation  whom 
I  have  come  across.  But  it's  sometimes  hard. 
The  prejudices  of  the  clever  are  harder  to  kill 
than  those  of  the  dull.  Also  I  sometimes  won- 
der whether  this  Commercialism,  or  Competition, 
or  whatever  the  filthy  infection  is,  hasn't  spread 
almost  too  far,  and  whether  the  best  hoj^e  isn't 
in  some  kind  of  upheaval." 

All  this  is  supplemented  in  an  account  written 
by  Hugh  Dalton,  an  intimate  friend  of  this  time. 
"During  our  years  at  Cambridge,  Fabianism  was 
at  its  high  tide,  and  attracted  most  of  those  who 
had  any  social  enthusiasm  worth  speaking  of. 
Rupert  joined  the  C.U.F.S.  in  April,  1907.  He 
came  to  me,  I  remember,  and  said,  'I'm  not  your 
sort  of  Socialist;  I'm  a  William  Morris  sort  of 
Socialist,  but  I  want  to  join  your  Society  as  an 
Associate.'  He  became  a  full  member  a  year 
later.  Like  many  of  us,  he  was  falling  by  then 
under  the  subtle  influence  of  the  Webbs,  and 


34  RUPERT  BROOKE 

siiniiltancoiisly  the  atmosphere  of  Cambridge  was 
teaching  him  to  vahie  and  to  cultivate  lucidity  of 
tliought  and  precision  of  reasoning.  He  soon  saw 
the  intellectual  limitations  of  a  'William  Morris 
sort  of  Socialist,'  and  though  he  never  studied 
the  fine  points  of  economics,  he  came  to  talk  very 
good  sense  on  the  larger  economic  questions. 

"It  was  through  the  meetings  of  the  Carbonari 
that  I  first  came  to  know  him  well.  This  was  a 
society  of  our  contemporaries  in  King's,  about  a 
dozen,  which  we  formed  in  our  first  term  for  pa- 
pers and  discussions.  Rupert  and  I  and  one  or 
two  others  were  generally  the  last  to  separate, 
and  sometimes  the  dawn  was  in  the  sky  before 
we  got  to  bed.  We  walked  round  the  Courts 
and  beside  the  river  for  hours,  trying  to  get 
things  clear.  For  we  wanted,  half  passionately 
and  half  humorously,  to  get  everything  clear 
quickly.  Hitherto,  we  thought,  we  had  been  too 
young  to  think,  and  soon  we  might  be  too  busy, 
and  idtimately  we  should  be  too  old.  The  golden 
time  was  now. 

"  'There  are  only  three  things  in  the  world,'  he 
said  once,  vehemently  answering  some  Carbonaro 
who  had  been  talking  like  a  Philistine,  'one  is  to 
read  poetry,  another  is  to  write  poetry,  and  the 
best  of  all  is  to  live  poetry!'  And  I  remember 
his  saying  that  at  rare  moments  he  had  glimpses 


A  MEMOIR  85 

of  what  poetry  really  meant,  how  it  solved  all 
problems  of  conduct  and  settled  all  questions  of 
values.  Moreover,  it  kept  men  young,  he 
thought.  One  night  we  were  sitting  at  a  high 
window  overlooking  King's  Parade.  We  had  been 
discussing  some  philosophical  point  about  the  na- 
ture of  Beauty,  when  we  saw  and  heard  some 
drunken  members  of  another  college  going  home. 
'Those  fellows/  he  said,  'would  think  us  very  old 
if  they  had  been  in  this  room  to-night,  but  when 
they  go  down  and  sit  on  office  stools,  tliey  will 
grow  old  quite  suddenly,  and  many  years  hence 
we  shall  still  be  talking  and  thinking  about  these 
sorts  of  things,  and  we  shall  still  be  young.' 

''As  for  philosophy,  he  shared  the  general  view 
of  the  set  in  which  we  moved  that  ethics  were  ex- 
ceedingly important,  but  metaphysics  rather 
trivial;  that  it  mattered  immensely  what  was 
good,  but  comparatively  little  what  was  real.  I 
remember  several  fierce  arguments  ^  as  to  whether 
a  man's  character,  as  distinct  from  the  series  of 
states  of  mind  through  which  he  passed,  could  be 
good  in  itself,  and  also  a  controversy  as  to  whether 
states  of  affairs,  as  distinct  from  the  states  of 
mind  of  the  persons  concerned  in  them,  could  be 
good   in   themselves.      Rupert   maintained    that 

^Argument,  it  will  be  remembered,  at  Youth's  Funeral,  was  'too 
full  of  woe  to  speak.' 


8C  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Variety  was  good  in  itself.  'A  world  contain- 
ing you  and  me  and  Maynard  Keynes,'  he  said, 
'is  obviously  better  than  a  world  containing  three 
people  exactly  like  any  one  of  us!'" 

One  of  the  most  significant  and  absorbing  of 
his  activities  was  the  dramatic.  Here  I  must 
quote  from  E.  J.  Dent's  admirable  record: 
"When  I  came  back  to  Cambridge  in  the  autumn 
of  1907,  I  soon  became  aware  that  a  new  spirit 
was  making  itself  felt.  Probably  it  was  active 
in  more  ways  than  I  was  able  to  observe;  but 
the  first  notable  result  of  it  was  the  perform- 
ance of  ]\Iarlowe's  Faustus  in  November  by  a 
number  of  men  who  afterwards  constituted 
themselves  as  the  IMarlowe  Dramatic  Society. 
The  new  spirit  seemed  to  come  partly  from 
Rugby,  partly  from  Bedales,  and  by  an  odd  co- 
incidence the  two  leaders,  though  not  related, 
bore  the  same  name:  Rupert  and  Justin  Brooke. 
It  was  a  queer  performance.  The  elder  genera- 
tion were  scandalised  almost  before  the  play  be- 
gan: no  scenery,  only  dingy  green  hangings,  no 
music,  no  footlights,  frequent  'black-outs,'  no 
names  of  the  actors  printed.  And  all  this  in  the 
A.D.C.  Theatre,  with  its  familiar  portraits,  its 
familiar  memories!  No  wonder  they  were  upset 
by  it  all.    'Faustus  isn't  a  play  at  all' — 'absurd 


A  MEMOIR  87 

for  undergraduates  to  attempt  tragedy' — 'why 
didn't  they  get  somebody  with  experience  to 
coach  them?' — 'why  do  they  act  in  the  dark?' — 
*not  always  in  very  nice  taste.'  It  was  indeed  a 
queer  performance.  Faustus  looked  absurdly 
young;  ]Mephistopheles  (Rupert),  his  face  com- 
pletely hidden  by  his  cowl,  generally  turned  his 
back  to  the  audience,  and  spoke  in  a  thick  indis- 
tinct voice  which  often  served  merely  as  a  back- 
ground to  the  piercing  whispers  of  the  Master  of 

,  whose  thirst  for  information  was  insatiable. 

But  in  spite  of  these  things  and  many  others,  in 
spite  of  the  tedious  humour  of  the  comic  scenes, 
the  play  had  a  new  spirit  of  its  own.  The  tragic 
moments  were  genuinely  moving.  Crude,  awk- 
ward, and  amateurish  as  it  all  was,  there  was  the 
spirit  of  true  poetry  about  it.  One  felt  that  to 
these  actors  poetry  was  the  greatest  thing  in  life. 
"The  Marlowe  group  were  inclined  to  be  sus- 
picious, perhaps  not  unjustly,  of  anyone  who  was 
a  member  of  the  Senate.  But  as  I  had  been  one 
of  the  few  to  admit  themselves  sincerely  im- 
pressed by  Faustus,  I  was  occasionally  allowed 
to  hear  news  of  their  next  project.  Milton  was  to 
be  commemorated  in  the  summer,^  and  the  young 

'  By  this  time  the  Authorities  had  come  round  to  the  Marlowe 
Society,  and  Christ's  College  bespoke  a  special  performance  of  its 
Qormis  for  their  celebration  of  the  Tercentenary. 


38  RUPERT  BROOKE 

poets  were  going  to  have  a  hand  in  it.  Rupert 
was  to  be  seen  ahiiost  daily,  I  believe,  in  Room 
Theta,  studying  vast  books  on  thcatre-eonstruc- 
tion;  a  kind  friend  brought  out  for  him  his  copy 
of  the  Trinity  Milton  faesimile,  for  the  settling 
of  points  of  textual  criticism;  and  mysterious  de- 
signs for  costumes  and  scenery  were  handed 
round,  in  which  wonderful  effects  a  la  Gordon 
Craig  were  to  be  obtained  with  scaffold  poles. 

"It  is  difficult  to  criticise  Comus,  or  to  write  the 
history  of  its  preparation.  It  had  much  the  same 
faults  and  the  same  merits  as  Faustus,  though  on 
a  larger  scale.  Rupert  was  not  a  good  actor,^ 
nor  even  a  good  speaker  of  verse.  Yet  I  feel  now 
that  anyone  who  remembers  Comus,  and  remem- 
bers it  with  ever  so  slight  a  sense  of  beauty,  will 
think  of  Rupert  as  the  central  figure  of  it;  and 
watching  rehearsals  daily,  as  I  did,  I  felt  that, 
however  much  his  personal  beauty  might  count 
for,  it  was  his  passionate  devotion  to  the  spirit 
of  poetry  that  really  gave  Comus  its  peculiar  and 
indescribable  atmosphere. 

"Comus,  however  unimportant  to  the  world  at 
large,  did,  in  fact,  mean  a  great  deal  for  Rupert 
and  his  friends.    It  was  the  first  time  that  he  had 

*  He  took  the  part  of  the  Attendant  Spirit.  It  is  only  fair  to 
say  that  this  view  of  his  acting,  or  at  any  rate  of  liis  elocution,  was 
far  from  universal. 


A  MEMOIR  39 

had  to  bear  the  responsibility  of  a  large  under- 
taking, and  he  addressed  himself  to  it  in  the  spirit 
of  a  scholar.  It  deepened  his  sense  of  poetry, 
of  drama,  and  of  music;  it  made  him  develop  an 
ideal  continually  present  in  his  mind,  even  in 
later  years,  which  gave  solidity  to  his  group,  the 
ideal  of  Cambridge,  of  young  Cambridge,  as  the 
source  from  which  the  most  vital  movements  in 
literature,  art,  and  drama,  were  to  spring.  Comus 
effected  an  intimate  collaboration  of  all  sorts  of 
brains,  and  it  effected  especially  a  co-operation 
of  men  and  women.  Rupert  was  by  no  means  the 
only  remarkable  person  in  the  circle.  He  had, 
moreover,  a  power  of  making  friends  with  women 
as  well  as  with  men,  and  although  Comus  was 
probably  a  symptom  rather  than  a  cause,  it  was 
from  about  that  time  that  joint  societies,  such  as 
the  Heretics  and  the  Fabians,  began  to  make  a 
new  influence  felt." 

Rupert  was  knocked  up  by  his  exertions  over 
Comus.  He  wrote  from  Rugby  to  Mrs.  Cornford 
(then  jNIiss  Frances  Darwin)  :  "I  went  off  with- 
out even  saying  good-bye  or  thank-you  to  people. 
My  mother  (I  can  plead)  packed  me  up  and 
snatched  me  here  to  sleep  and  recover.  I  am  now 
convalescent,  and  can  sit  up  and  take  a  little 
warm  milk-and-Tennyson.  1  feel  a  deserter;  but 
1  can  always  adduce  the  week  when  the  Commit- 


40  RUPERT  BROOKE 

tee  went  to  the  seaside,  and  I  faced  the  world  and 
Albert's  Artistic  Tenipcrainciit  alone."  ^ 

He  had  written  to  liis  mother  about  this  week, 
and  about  another  matter.  "Albert  [Ruther- 
ston],  who  is  painting  our  scenery,  is  staying  with 
me.  We  paint  in  the  theatre,  9  to  5  every  day. 
I  daub  a  little,  but  most  of  the  time  carry  and 
empty  pails,  run  errands,  wind  pulleys,  etc.  .  .  . 
I  suppose  you  heard  of  the  dreadful  tragedy  that 
happened  last  Saturday  week — [Walter]  Head- 
lam's  death?  It  was  terribly  sudden.  He  was 
about  in  King's  all  the  week — kept  the  procession 
for  the  Chancellor's  installation  on  Wednesday 
waiting  for  half  an  hour  by  being  late — in  his 
usual  way!  On  Friday  he  was  in  King's,  about, 
as  usual.  Friday  evening  he  went  up  to  town, 
had  a  slight  operation  (by  some  accounts),  and 
died  on  Saturday  morning.  ...  It  made  me 
quite  miserable  and  ill  for  some  days.  One  gets 
so  angry  at  that  sort  of  thing.  I  didn't  know 
him  very  well.  But  he  was  the  one  classic  I  really 
admired  and  liked  f  and  I  had  done  a  good  deal 
of  work  with  him.  The  papers  made  very  little 
of  it.    He  published  so  little  that  outside  people 

^  It  was  at  about  this  time  that  he  bought  two  drawings  by 
Augustus  John,  "very  splcudid  ones — even  the  critical  Albert  ad- 
mitted that,  and  confessed  jealousy." 

'  It  was  not  till  later  that  he  knew  A.  W.  Verrall,  whom  he 
'admired  and  liked'  very  much. 


A  MEMOIR  41 

didn't  know  much  of  him.  But  his  friends,  and 
we  who  were  his  pupils,  knew  his  great  genius. 
I  don't  know  liow  much  of  him  they  will  be  able 
to  rake  together  from  his  papers.  But  all  the 
great,  ripe,  splendid  works  we  all  proudly  looked 
forward  to  him  achieving — which  we  knew  he 
might  consunmiate  any  time  he  gave  himself  a 
few  months,  have  died  with  him:  can  never  be 
made.  That's  the  terrible  thing.  Even  in  Cam- 
bridge many  people  knew  of  him  most  as  a  bril- 
liant 'scholar,'  i.  e.,  emender  of  Greek  texts.  But 
he  was  also  about  the  best  writer  of  Greek  there 
has  been  since  the  Greeks.  And  what  I  loved  so  in 
him  was  his  extraordinary  and  living  apprecia- 
tion of  all  English  poetry,  modern  and  ancient. 
To  hear  him  repeat  it  was  a  delight.  He  was  an 
excellent  poet  himself,  and  had  perfect  taste.  He 
first  inspired  me  with  a  desire  to  get  Comus  done, 
a  term  or  two  ago,  and  has  often  talked  about  it 
since.  I  had  made  up,  in  my  mind,  a  little  list 
of  things  about  which  I  was  going  to  ask  him, 
large  and  small  points,  to  make  certain  that  we 
should  interpret  and  understand  it  in  the  best 
way  possible;  but  1  put  it  off  till  too  late.  .  .  . 
The  whole  thing  makes  me  so  rebellious — to  think 
what  the  world  has  lost." 


42  RUPERT  BROOKE 

The  vacations  were  spent  in  all  sorts  of  ways: 
at  the  Fabian  Summer  School,  or  camping  out 
with  smaller  groups  of  friends;  on  walking  tours; 
or,  at  Christmas,  with  large  heterogeneous  par- 
ties for  winter-sports  in  Switzerland.  He  told 
his  mother  of  his  plans  for  one  of  the  Swiss  ex- 
cursions in  the  winter  of  1908.  "What  I  meant 
about  the  holidays  is  this.  It  is  quite  true  that 
I  have  plenty  of  opportunities  of  resting.  But 
I  always  feel  that  I  oughtn't  to,  and  can't,  do 
nothing.  There  are  so  many  things  I  must  learn 
and  do,  and  there  is  not  too  much  time.  My 
brain  Jiiust  be  working.  And  so  the  only  way 
(1  find)  I  have  a  real  holiday  from  my  work,  is 
on  a  walking-tour,  or  in  Switzerland;  times  and 
places  where  it  is  impossible  to  think  or  read  for 
more  than  five  minutes.  In  a  way  such  things 
are  a  waste  of  time.  And  I  can't  imagine  any- 
thing I  should  hate  more  than  a  long  'holiday' 
like  that,  of  more  than  a  week  or  ten  days.  It 
would  be  intolerable.  But,  I  think,  just  a  week's 
mental  rest  strengthens  a  mind  for  some  time. 
This  sounds  rather  priggish;  but  I'm  really  very 
much  in  earnest  about  reading  and  writing." 

The  Swiss  relaxations  used  to  include  the  per- 
formance of  a  play,  or  even  an  opera — the  7m- 
portance  of  Being  Earnest,  in   which   Rupert 


A  MEMOIR  43 

played  Algernon,  or  a  nonsense-melodrama  writ- 
ten in  collaboration  by  the  party,  but  mostly  by 
him.  In  the  opera  he  was  obliged  at  the  last 
moment,  by  the  sudden  defection  of  the  tenor, 
to  play  the  hero.  He  couldn't  sing  a  note;  and 
the  difficulty  was  got  over  by  making  the  actor 
who  played  his  valet  stand  beside  him  in  a 
rigid  position  and  sing,  while  Rupert  did  the 
gestures. 

The  English  holidays  were  more  peaceful. 
"Overcote  is  a  lovely  place,"  he  wrote  to  his 
mother  on  one  of  them,  "with  nothing  but  an  old 
inn,  and  a  ferry.  There  are  villages  round,  a 
mile  or  two  away,  but  hidden.  And  there's  just 
the  Ouse,  a  slow  stream,  and  some  trees  and  fields, 
and  an  immense  expanse  of  sky.  There  were  a 
lot  of  wild  birds  about,  wild  duck,  and  snipe,  and 
herons." 

All  these  occasions  produced  floods  of  doggerel, 
some  of  which  is  amusing — from  a  snatch  of  blank 
verse  on  an  unfortunate  town-bred  friend  who 
arrived  late  on  a  wet  night  at  a  camp  where  all 
the  beds  were  occupied,  and  didn't  rise  to  the 
occasion: 

In  the  late  evening  he  was  out  of  place, 
And  infinitely  irrelevant  at  dawn. 


44  RUPERT  BROOKE 

— to  the  following  elaborate  ballade,  composed 
during  a  sleepless  night  when  he  and  Dudley 
Ward,^  coming  very  late  into  Cranborne,  couldn't 
find  the  inn  wiiich  they  had  picked  out  in  the 
guide-book  for  the  sake  of  its  name : 

In  Cranborne  town  two  inns  there  are, 
And  one  the  Fleur-de-Lys  is  hight. 

And  one,  the  inn  Victoria,- 

Where,  for  it  was  alone  in  sight, 

We  turned  in  tired  and  tearful  plight 

Seeking  for  warmth,  and  company. 

And  food,  and  beds  so  soft  and  white — 

These  things  are  at  the  Fleur-de-Lys. 

Where  is  the  ointment  for  the  scar? 

Slippers?  and  table  deftly  dight? 
Sofas  ?  tobacco  ?  soap  ?  and  ah ! 

Hot  water  for  a  weary  wight? 

Where  is  the  food,  in  toil's  despite? 
The  golden  eggs?  the  toast?  the  tea? 

The  maid  so  pretty  and  polite? 
These  things  are  at  the  Fleur-de-Lys. 

Oh,  we  have  wandered  far  and  far. 
We  are  fordone  and  wearied  quite. 

No  lamp  is  lit;  there  is  no  star. 
Only  we  know  that  in  the  night 
We  somewhere  missed  the  faces  bright, 

*  A  Cambridge  friend,  not  to  be  confused  with  the  Member  of 
Parliament  of  the  same  name. 

'  Showing  that  a  Grantchester  man  can  make  cockney  rhymes 
just  like  a  Barton  man. 


A  MEMOIR  45 

The  lips  and  eyes  we  longed  to  see; 

And  Love,  and  Laughter,  and  Delight. 
These  things  are  at  the  Fleur-de-Lys. 

Prince,  it  is  dark  to  left  and  right. 

Waits  there  an  inn  for  you  and  me? 
Fine  noppy  ale  and  red  firelight? 

These  things  are  at  the  Fleur-de-Lys. 

The  next  was  written  at  a  very  favourite  inn, 
the  Pink  and  Lily,  near  Prince's  Risborough,  on 
one  occasion  when  he  went  there  with  Jacques 
Raverat. 

Never  came  there  to  the  Pink 
Two  such  men  as  we,  I  think. 
Never  came  there  to  the  Lily 
Two  men  quite  so  richly  silly  ;^ 
So  broad,  so  supple,  and  so  tall. 
So  modest  and  so  brave  withal. 
With  hearts  so  clear,  such  noble  eyes. 
Filled  with  such  sage  philosophies, 
Thirsty  for  Good,  secure  of  Truth, 
Fired  by  a  purer  flame  than  youth. 
Serene  as  age,  but  not  so  dirty, 
Old,  young,  mature,  being  under  thirty. 
Were  ever  two  so  fierce  and  strong, 
WTio  drank  so  deep,  and  laughed  so  long. 
So  proudly  meek,  so  humbly  proud. 
Who  walked  so  far,  and  sang  so  loud  ? 

'  This  couplet,  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  rest,  was  supplied 
by  his  companion. 


46  RUPERT  BROOKE 

The  last  I  will  quote  was  pinned  to  some  food 
which  they  left  by  the  roadside  after  luncheon: 

Two  men  left  this  bread  and  cake 
For  whomsoever  finds  to  take. 
He  and  they  will  soon  be  dead. 
Pray  for  them  that  left  this  bread. 


From  this  time  the  story  shall  be  told  as  far 
as  possible  in  extracts  from  Rupert  Brooke's  let- 
ters to  his  friends,  from  which  his  character  will 
appear  far  more  vividly,  and  on  the  whole  more 
clearly,  than  from  anything  that  could  be  written 
about  it.  But  the  picture  thus  given  must  for 
various  reasons  be  incomplete,  and  perhaps  mis- 
leading; and  a  few^  touches  must  here  be  added, 
to  be  borne  in  mind  while  the  letters  are  read. 

They  might,  for  instance,  give  the  idea  of  self- 
absorption.  Self-conscious  he  was,  self-examin- 
ing, and  self-critical,  to  the  last  degi-ee;  but 
hardly  ever  self-absorbed.  The  extracts  cannot 
show  his  continual  helpfulness  and  serviceable- 
ness  to  his  friends,  both  in  large  matters  which 
are  too  private,  and  in  details  which  are  too 
trivial,  to  be  chronicled.  "There  was  a  deep- 
seated  generosity  in  him,"  says  Mrs.  Cornford, 
"at  once  sensible  and  tender.  I  used  to  think  that 
the  real  reason  the  charm  of  his  face  struck  peo- 


A  MEMOIR  47 

pie  so  greatly  was  because  its  clearness  and  fair- 
ness were  not  simply  a  happy  accident  of  youth, 
but  expressed  this  innate  cpiahty  in  him.  .  .  .  He 
was  endlessly  kind  in  helping  me  with  my  verses 
(except  that  kindness  seems  the  wrong  word,  be- 
cause he  did  it  as  a  matter  of  course) .  He  would 
sit  for  an  hour  or  two  at  a  time,  generally  on  the 
ground,  frowning  and  biting  the  end  of  his  pencil 
and  scribbling  little  notes  on  the  margin  before 
we  talked.  Of  the  better  things  he  would  only 
say  'I  like  that,'  or  'That's  good.'  I  can't  imagine 
him  using  a  word  of  that  emotional  jargon  in 
which  people  usually  talk  or  write  of  poetry.  He 
made  it  feel  more  like  carpentering."  Here  we 
see  him  as  he  often  was,  just  simple  and  serious, 
full  of  the  business  of  the  moment.  Indeed  he 
was  very  restful  to  be  with.  The  eager,  work- 
ing, excited  brain  which  shows  in  the  letters,  in- 
cessantly registering,  assimilating,  juggling  with, 
sensations  and  impressions,  hid  its  thrills  under 
an  appearance  almost  of  placidity.  He  never 
'put  himself  forward,'  and  seldom  took  the  lead, 
in  conversation;  someone  spoke  of  'the  beauty  of 
his  eyes  looking  steadily  and  without  mocking 
into  quite  ordinary  talk.'  But  he  was  'noticing' 
all  the  time;  he  had  the  power  which  women  are 
siniposed  to  have  of  knowing  everything  that  is 


48  RUPERT  BROOKE 

going  on  in  the  room;  and  he  seemed  never  to 
forget  the  smallest  detail. 

His  observation  was  always,  if  not  'mocking/ 
at  any  rate  amused ;  and  something  must  be  said 
about  the  peculiar  quality  of  his  irony  and  his 
humour,  which  were  very  intimate,  and  might  be 
misunderstood  by  strangers.  J.  T.  Sheppard  has 
written  admirably  about  them,  as  they  played  on 
his  friends.  "He  would  laugh  at  them,  and  some- 
times treat  their  most  cherished  enthusiasms  as 
amusing,  if  harmless  foibles;  but  he  had  not  the 
power,  possessed  by  some  people  who  matter  less, 
of  making  you  seem  small  and  dull.  His  society 
was,  in  the  good  sense,  comfortable.  He  loved 
children,  and  when  he  treated  his  grown-up 
friends  as  rather  absurd  but  very  nice  children, 
they  would  have  had  to  be  very  absurd  indeed  to 
resent  it.  It  must  have  been  very  hard  to  ])e 
pompous  or  priggish  in  his  company."  He 
treated  himself  in  much  the  same  way.  If  there 
was  any  fun  to  be  got  out  of  a  laugh  against  him, 
far  from  grudging  it,  he  gave  every  facility;  but 
he  liked  to  have  the  first  go  at  it  himself.  There 
was  always  some  foundation  for  the  jokes;  but 
the  truth  and  the  fun  were  inextricably  mixed 
up,  and  one  had  to  know  exactly  how  many  grains 
of  salt  to  take.  As  an  obvious  instance:  it  was 
certainly  his  usual  belief  that  he  was,  or  at  any 


A  MEMOIR  49 

rate  had  it  in  him  to  be,  a  good  poet ;  and  so  he 
would  describe  himself  as  the  first  poet  of  the 
age,  because  it  would  be  fumiy  if  he  thought  so, 
and  therefore  it  was  amusing  to  say  so ;  and  there 
was  no  risk  of  his  correspondents  thinking  him 
cocksure.  In  the  same  way  he  would  pick  out  his 
best  lines  for  special  praise.  "There's  one  superb 
line,"  he  said  to  me  when  he  first  showed  me  the 
sonnet  Love.  "  'Astonishment  is  no  more  in  hand 
or  shoulder.'  Isn't  it  amazing?"  He  did  think 
it  good,  and  was  enjoying  what  Keats  calls  'the 
reperception  and  ratification  of  what  is  fine'  in 
his  own  work;  but  he  said  it  with  a  twinkle. 

He  always  loved  to  dramatise  a  situation,  and 
to  make  out  that  he  had  said  or  done  something 
absurdly  striking  and  stunning.  Here  is  a  good 
illustration  from  a  letter  of  1909:  "And  so  I 
walked  and  laughed  and  met  a  many  people  and 
made  a  thousand  songs — all  very  good — and,  in 
the  end  of  the  days,  came  to  a  woman  who  was 
more  glorious  than  the  sun,  and  stronger  and 
stranger  than  the  sea,  and  kinder  than  the  earth, 
who  is  a  flower  made  out  of  fire,  a  star  that  laughs 
all  day,  whose  brain  is  clean  and  clear  like  a  man's, 
and  her  heart  is  full  of  courage  and  kindness;  and 
whom  I  love.  I  told  her  that  the  Earth  was 
crowned  with  windflowers,  and  dancing  down  the 
violet  ways  of  Spring;  that  Christ  had  died  and 


50  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Pan  was  risen ;  that  her  mouth  was  hke  the  sun- 
light on  a  gull's  wings.  As  a  matter  of  fact  1 
believe  I  said  'Hullo!  isn't  it  rippin'  weather?'  " 

"You  are  the  only  person,  Frances,"  he  wrote 
much  later  to  jNIrs.  Cornford,  "who  ever  believed 
all  my  lies.  Nothing  (short,  perhaps,  of  incredu- 
lity) can  shake  my  devotion  to  you." 

One  more  quotation  from  Sheppard :  "He  was 
kind  and  unaffected.  But  he  was  not  miraculously 
unselfish,  nor  indifferent  to  his  popularity.  The 
fact  that  in  small  things  he  sometimes  seemed  to 
choose  the  pleasant  second-best,  and,  as  he  him- 
self realised,  rather  eagerly  to  accept  the  little 
successes  which  he  could  so  easily  win,  should 
make  us  appreciate  not  less,  but  more,  the  Tight- 
ness and  the  goodness  of  his  larger  choices.  He 
was  very  sensitive  to  praise,  and  it  would  be 
wrong  to  say  that  he  was  always  wisely  praised. 
But  he  was  sensible  enough  and  strong  enough 
to  take  flattery,  in  the  long  run,  for  what  it  was 
worth ;  and  he  valued  the  affection  that  was  criti- 
cal, not  flattering. 

"Because  he  was  human,  he  enjoyed  his  popu- 
larity. The  quality  which  won  it  was,  I  think,  his 
power  of  liking  pco2:)le,  and  making  them  feel, 
because  he  liked  them  all,  not  only  at  their  ease 
with  him,  but  also  happy  and  friendly  with  one 
another.    His  company  had  this  effect  at  home, 


A  MEMOIR  51 

and  in  his  rooms  at  King's,  in  his  garden  at 
Grantchester,  in  London,  and  I  am  sure  wherever 
he  went  in  Germany  and  in  America.  Certainly 
the  most  varied  people  used  to  delight  in  it,  and 
he,  for  his  part,  was  delighted  when  some  of  the 
incongruous  persons  he  liked,  unexpectedly  also 
hked  one  another. 

*'He  was  in  some  ways  like  a  child,  very  frank 
and  simple,  generally  knowing  what  he  wanted, 
and,  if  he  could  see  it,  taking  it ;  hut  also,  where 
his  affections  were  concerned,  most  loyal  and  de- 
voted ;  suffering  acutely  in  the  few  great  trouhles 
that  came  to  him,  but  generally  confident  and 
happy;  above  all  delighting,  and  making  other 
people  share  his  delight,  in  a  great  nmnber  of 
different  things." 


Ill 


He  took  the  Classical  Tripos  in  the  summer 
of  1909,  only  getting  a  Second.  This  was  a  'dis- 
appointment,' though  not  specially  so  to  him. 
"He  found  English  literature,  now,  for  him,  more 
important  than  the  ancient  classics;  and  he  has 
convinced  us  all  that  he  was  right,"  says  Shep- 
pard,  himself  a  Don  at  King's;  so  there  is  no 
need  for  head-shaking. 

After  term,  he  went  to  live  within  easy  dis- 


52  RUPERT  BROOKE 

tance  of  Cambridge,  at  a  house  in  Grantchester 
called  the  Orchard.  Here  he  spent  most  of  the 
rest  of  this  year,  going  for  the  summer  lioHdays 
to  a  vicarage  his  parents  had  taken  at  Clevedon 
in  Somerset,  which  he  was  allowed  to  cram  with 
relays  of  his  friends.  He  was  w'orking  all  these 
months  for  the  Charles  Oldham  Shakespeare 
prize,  w  hich  he  won  in  the  course  of  the  Michael- 
mas Term. 

He  went  to  Switzerland  for  Christmas,  where 
he  got  poisoned  by  drinking  some  bad  water;  and 
he  came  home  to  find  his  father  seriously  ill  with 
hemorrhage  on  the  brain.  He  had  to  give  up 
Grantchester  and  Cambridge  and  all  his  plans 
for  next  term,  and  undertake  the  temporary 
management  of  the  House  at  Rugby.  He  wrote 
to  ]Mrs.  Cornford  to  apologise  for  backing  out  of 
his  part  in  llie  Land  of  Heart's  Desire.  "There 
are  other  things  I'm  very  sick  to  miss,"  he  went 
on:  "the  Marlowe  play,  and  Verrall's  lectures, 
etc. — seeing  you  all — the  whole  life  of  it,  in  fact. 
Also  I  fear  I  may  have  confused  the  Fabians 
rather  by  not  coming  up.  I'm  a  general  nuisance. 
Oh!  and  I'm  so  sad  and  fierce  and  miserable  not 
to  be  in  my  garden  and  little  house  at  Grant- 
chester all  this  term.  I  love  being  there  so  much 
— more  than  any  place  I've  ever  lived  in.  I  love 
the  place  and  especially  the  solitude  so  much.  I'd 


A  MEMOIR  68 

thought  of  being  there  when  the  spring  was  com- 
ing, every  day  this  winter,  and  dreamt  of  seeing 
all  the  httle  brown  and  green  things.  It's  hor- 
rible of  me  to  talk  like  this  when  I'm  in  the  house 
with  two  other  people  who  are  infinitely  worse 
off  in  happiness  than  I  am,  and  one  of  them  in 
pain.  .  .  .  INIany  thanks  for  your  letter,  by  the 
way.  It  cheered  me  greatly  at  the  exact  time 
when  I  was  sitting  gloomily  waiting  for  my  fa- 
ther's return  from  the  London  doctor,  and  won- 
dering what  the  verdict  would  be.  I  had  sunk 
into  that  abysmal  darkness  which  comes  on  a  con- 
valescent when  anything  goes  wrong.  I've  shaken 
off  my  dreadful  disease  now.  It  inspired  me  with 
thousands  of  Ilardyesque  short  poems  about  peo- 
ple whose  affairs  went  dismally  wrong,  or  fright- 
fully detestable  people  I  couldn't  help  falling  in 
love  with,  or  interviews  with  the  Almighty  in 
which  He  turned  out  to  be  an  absolute  and  un- 
imaginative idiot.  .  .  .  But  I  hope  to  occupy  my 
exile  by  composing  some  work  of  immortal 
genius." 

A  little  later  Mr.  Brooke  died  suddenly,  and 
was  buried  on  the  very  day  when  the  fifty  boys 
were  coming  back  to  School  Field.  The  shock 
was  great.  Rupert  wrote  to  me  in  ISIarch,  thank- 
ing me  for  a  letter,  *'and  indeed  for  the  earlier 
ones  to  an  invalid — though  those  seem  so  long 


54  RUPERT  BROOKE 

ago  that  I  cannot  find  continuity  between  that 
time  and  this.  It  is  the  smallest  part  of  the  gulf 
that  I  have  been  ill  again — I  collapsed,  unfor- 
givably [with  influenza],  just  after  the  funeral; 
and  again  subsisted  for  days  on  milk  and  the 
pieces  I  could  surreptitiously  bite  out  of  the  end 
of  my  thermometer.  Now,  and  lately,  though,  I 
am  well  and  bursting  with  activity.  I  work  like 
a  Professor,  and  feel  the  Spring  in  my  bones.  I 
am  acting  Housemaster  in  my  father's  place  till 
the  end  of  the  term.  Then  we  are  to  be  turned 
from  this  place  by  cold  strangers,  into  a  little 
house  with  a  patch  of  grass  in  front,  on  a  road, 
stiff  and  ugly.  ...  I  find  I  am  an  admirable 
schoolmaster.  I  have  a  bluff  Christian  tone  that 
is  wholly  pedagogic.  Also,  they  remember  I  used 
to  play  for  the  School  at  various  violent  games, 
and  respect  me  accordingly." 

"JNIy  heart  is  warm,"  he  wrote  to  Jacques  Rav- 
erat,  "and  has  been  half  secure — or  confident, 
rather — throughout  the  last  four  centuries  (just 
a  month)  because  of  the  splendid  people  I  know. 
Half  are  scattered  abroad  now.  But  you'll  all 
meet  in  April.    I'll  find  all  of  you  by  August." 

Some  of  them  he  did  meet  in  April,  when  he 
wrote  to  me  from  Lulworth :  "At  length  I  am  es- 
caped from  the  world's  great  snare.  This  is 
heaven.    Downs,  Hens,  Cottages,  and  the  Sun, 


'A  MEMOIR  55 

.  .  .  For  the  rest  of  Eternity  my  stabile  address 
is  24  Bilton  Road,  Rugby.  School  Field,  that 
palatial  building,  will  know  us  no  more.  And 
henceforth  I  shall  have  to  play  on  other  people's 
tennis  launs.  I  wept  copiously  last  week  on  say- 
ing good-bye  to  the  three  and  fifty  little  boys 
whose  Faith  and  florals  I  had  upheld  for  ten 
weeks.  I  found  I  had  fallen  in  love  with  them 
all.  They  were  so  pleasant  and  fresh-minded 
as  they  were.  And  it  filled  me  with  purpureal 
gloom  to  know  that  their  plastic  souls  would  har- 
den into  the  required  shapes,  and  they  would  go 
to  swell  the  indistinguishable  masses  who  fill 
Trinity  Hall,  Clare,  Caius  .  .  .  and  at  last  be- 
come members  of  the  English  Upper,  or  Upper 
Middle,  Classes.  I  am  glad  I  am  not  going  to 
be  a  schoolmaster  for  ever.  The  tragedy  would 
be  too  great." 

He  went  back  to  Grantchester  for  most  of  the 
May  term,  and  immediately  got  caught  up  again 
in  the  multiplicity  of  Cambridge  life.  "I'm  afraid 
there  isn't  the  ghost  of  a  chance,"  he  wrote  in  an- 
swer to  a  suggestion  that  we  should  go  abroad 
together  for  a  fortnight.  "I'm  so  extraordinarily 
inextricable  and  necessary!  You  think  this  con- 
ceit; but  it's  not.  Various  bodies  and  societies 
have  arranged  things  in  which  I  am  continuously 
and  hopelessly  involved.    Also  my  labours  at  the 


'66  RUPERT  BROOKE 

University  Library  press  most  insistently  upon 
me.  I  wish  I  could  have  come,  it  would  have  been 
lovely.  Grantchester's  lovely  though,  too.  When 
are  you  coming?  The  apple-blossom  and  the 
river  and  the  sunsets  have  combined  to  make  me 
relapse  into  a  more  than  Wordsworthian  com- 
nuinion  M'ith  nature,  which  prevents  me  reading 
more  than  100  lines  a  day,  or  thinking  at  all.  * 

His  work  at  this  time  was  on  the  Elizabethan 
drama,  mainly  for  a  monograph  on  'Puritanism 
as  represented  or  referred  to  in  tlie  early  English 
drama  up  to  1042,'  with  which  he  won  the  Har- 
ness Prize  this  year.^  It  shows  deep  reading. 
"I  read  20  pre-Elizabethan  plays  a  week,  all 
poor,"  he  had  written  in  JNIarch;  and  in  April 
from  Lulworth,  "All  the  morning  I  souse  my- 
self in  Elizabethan  plays;  and  every  afternoon  I 
walk  up  perpendicular  places  alone,  for  hours" — 
adding  in  a  moment  of  surfeit,  "There  are  no 
good  plays  between  1500  and  16,30,  except  the 
Faithful  Shepherdess — and,  perhai^s,  Antony 
and  Cleopatra/* 

By  this  time  he  had  already  written  a  good 
many  of  the  poems  which  were  to  appear  in  the 
1908-1911  section  of  his  first  book,  and  he  was 
writing  more.     "I  am  slowly  recovering  from 

*  A  copy  of  this  essay  is  in  the  British  Museum  Library. 


A  MEMOIR  57 

Work,"  he  \\Tote  to  jNIrs.  Cornford.  "Hence- 
forth I  am  going  to  lead  what  Dudley  calls  'a 
Life  Dedicated  to  Art.'  Hurray!"  Mrs.  Corn- 
ford  and  he  both  had  plans  for  publishing  a  vol- 
ume of  poems  in  1910 — (hers  was  carried  out, 
his  postponed) .  "They  will  review  us  together!" 
he  told  her.  "The  Daily  Chronicle,  or  some  such, 
that  reviews  verse  in  lumps,  will  notice  thirty- 
four  minor  poets  in  one  day,  ending  with 
Thoughts  in  Verse  on  many  Occasions,  by  a  Per- 
son of  Great  Sensibility,  bj'-  F.  Cornford,  and 
Dead  Pansy-Leaves,  and  other  Flotcerets,  by  R. 
Brooke;  and  it  will  say,  '^Ir.  Cornford  has  some 
pretty  thoughts;  but  Miss  Brooke  is  always  in- 
tolerable' (they  always  guess  the  sex  wrong). 
And  then  I  shall  refuse  to  call  on  you.  Or  an- 
other paper  will  say,  ']\Iajor  Cornford  and  the 
Widow  Brooke  are  both  bad;  but  Major  Corn- 
ford is  the  worst.'  And  then  you  will  cut  me  in 
the  street." 

The  ]\Iarlowe  Society's  second  performance 
of  Dr.  Faustus,  got  up  for  a  party  of  fifty  Ger- 
man students  who  visited  Cambridge  in  August, 
was  one  excitement  of  this  summer;  and  another 
was  a  tour  with  Dudley  Ward  in  a  disreputable- 
looking  caravan,  to  popularise  the  Minority  Re- 
port on  the  Poor  Law  in  the  principal  towns  on 
the  South  Coast — except  Bournemouth,  through 


58  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Mhich  they  drove,  bare-headed  and  barefoot,  at 
full  speed,  in  fear  or  hope  of  being  seen  by  a 
Conservative  aunt  who  lived  there. 

Next  month  he  wrote  to  F.  II.  Keeling  ^  from 
Rugby.  The  letter  is  dated  September  20th- 
23rd,  1910:  "I've  several  times  started  to  write 
you  a  notable  and  rhetorical  letter,  but  my  life 
has  been  too  jerky  to  admit  of  much  connected 
thought  lately,  so  the  letter  always  fizzled  away, 
and  was  not.  I'm  sorry  I  didn't  write  sooner, 
but  I  wanted  to  be  able  to  write  down  a  great 
attack  on  your  pessimism  in  abundant  and  rea- 
soned language.  And  such  a  thing  takes  time 
and  thought.    Also,  I  may  agree  with  you. 

"What  is  pessimism?  Why  do  you  say  you 
are  becoming  a  pessimist?  What  does  it  mean? 
He  may  (I  say  to  myself)  mean  that  he  thinks 
that  the  Universe  is  bad  as  a  whole,  or  that  it's 
bad  just  now,  or  that,  more  locally  and  import- 
antly, things  aren't  going  to  get  any  better  in 
our  time  and  our  country,  no  matter  how  much 
we  preach  Socialism  and  clean  hearts  at  them. 

"Is  it  the  last  two?  Are  you  telling  us  that  the 
world  is,  after  all,  bad,  and,  what's  more  horrible, 
without  enough  seeds  of  good  in  it?     I,  writing 

*  F.  H.  Keeling,  or  as  he  was  always  called  by  his  friends,  *Ben* 
Keeling,  the  chief  figure  among  the  Cambridge  Fabians  of  Rupert's 
day,  was  killed  in  the  Somme  Battle  of  1916. 


A  MEMOIR  59 

poetry  and  reading  books  and  living  at  Grant- 
chester  all  day,  feel  rather  doubtful  and  ignorant 
about  'the  world' — about  England,  and  men,  and 
what  they're  like.  Still,  I  see  some,  besides  the 
University  gang.  I  see  all  these  queer  provin- 
cials in  this  town,  upper  and  middle  and  lower 
class,  and  God  knows  they're  sterile  enough. 

"But  I  feel  a  placid  and  healthy  physician 
about  it  all  (only  I  don't  know  what  drugs  to 
recommend) .  This  is  because  I've  such  an  over- 
flowing (if  intermittent)  flood  of  anti-pessimism 
in  me.  I'm  using  the  word  now  in  what  I  expect 
is  its  most  important  sense,  of  a  feeling  rather 
than  a  reasoned  belief.  The  horror  is  not  in 
believing  the  Universe  is  bad — or  even  believing 
the  world  won't  improve — on  a  reasoned  and  cool 
examination  of  all  facts,  tendencies  and  values, 
so  much  as  in  a  sort  of  general  feeling  that  there 
isn't  much  potentiality  for  good  in  the  world,  and 
that  anyhow  it's  a  fairly  dreary  business, — an 
absence  of  much  appreciation  and  hope,  and  a 
somehow  paralysed  will  for  good.  As  this  is  a 
feeling,  it  may  be  caused  by  reason  and  experi- 
ence, or  more  often  by  loneliness  or  soul-measles 
or  indigestion  or  age  or  anything  else.  And  it 
can  equally  be  cured  by  other  things  than  reason 
— by  energy  or  weather  or  good  people,  as  well 
as  by  a  wider  ethical  grasp.     At  least,  so  I've 


60  RUPERT  BROOKE 

found  in  the  rather  slight  and  temporary  fits  of 
depression  I've  had,  in  exile  or  otherwise,  lately 
— or  even  in  an  enormous  period  of  Youthful 
Tragedy  with  which  I  started  at  Cambridge.  I 
have  a  remedy.  It  is  a  dangerous  one,  but  I 
think  very  good  on  the  whole;  though  it  may 
lead  to  a  sterile  but  ecstatic  content,  or  even  to 
the  asylum.  In  practice,  I  find,  it  doesn't — or 
hasn't  yet — make  me  inefficient.  ( I  am  address- 
ing an  Adult  School  on  Sunday.  I  have  started 
a  group  for  studying  the  jNIinority  Report  here. 
I  am  going  to  Cambridge  in  a  week  to  oversee, 
w  ith  the  light  of  pure  reason,  the  powerful  ener- 
gies of  those  who  are  setting  forth  the  new 
Fabian  Rooms, — and  later,  to  put  the  rising  gen- 
eration, Fabian  and  otherwise,  on  the  way  of 
Light,  all  next  term.) 

"The  remedy  is  Mysticism,  or  Life,  I'm  not 
sure  which.  Do  not  leap  or  turn  pale  at  the  word 
Mysticism,  I  do  not  mean  any  religious  thing,  or 
any  form  of  belief.  I  still  burn  and  torture 
Christians  daily.  It  is  merely  the  feeling — or  a 
kindred  one — which  underlay  the  mj^sticism  of 
the  wicked  mystics,  only  I  refuse  to  be  cheated 
by  the  feeling  into  any  kind  of  belief.  They 
were  convinced  by  it  that  the  world  was  very 
good,  or  that  the  Universe  was  one,  or  that  God 
existed.    I  don't  any  the  more  believe  the  world 


A  MEMOIR  61 

to  be  good.  Only  I  do  get  rid  of  the  despair 
that  it  isn't — and  I  certainly  seem  to  see  addi- 
tional possibilities  of  its  getting  better. 

"It  consists  in  just  looking  at  people  and 
things  as  themselves — neither  as  useful  nor  moral 
nor  ugly  nor  anything  else;  but  just  as  being. 
At  least,  that's  a  philosophical  description  of  it. 
What  happens  is  that  I  suddenly  feel  the  extra- 
ordinary value  and  importance  of  everybody  I 
meet,  and  almost  everything  I  see.  In  tilings 
I  am  moved  in  this  way  especially  by  some 
things ;  but  in  people  by  almost  all  people.  That 
is,  when  the  mood  is  on  me.  I  roam  about  places 
— yesterday  I  did  it  even  in  Birmingham! — and 
sit  in  trains  and  see  the  essential  glory  and 
beauty  of  all  the  people  I  meet.  I  can  watch  a 
dirty  middle-aged  tradesman  in  a  railway-car- 
riage for  hours,  and  love  every  dirty  greasy  sulky 
wrinkle  in  his  weak  chin  and  every  button  on  his 
spotted  unclean  waistcoat.  I  know  their  states 
of  mind  are  bad.  But  I'm  so  much  occupied  with 
their  being  there  at  all,  that  I  don't  have  time  to 
think  of  that.  I  tell  you  that  a  Birmingham 
gouty  Tariff  Reform  fifth-rate  business  man  is 
splendid  and  immortal  and  desirable. 

"It's  the  same  about  the  things  of  ordinary  life. 
Half  an  hour's  roaming  about  a  street  or  vil- 
lage or  railway-station  shows  so  much  beauty 


62  RUPERT  BROOKE 

that  it's  impossible  to  be  anything  but  wild  >vith 
suppressed  exhilaration.  And  it's  not  only  beauty 
and  beautiful  things.  In  a  flieker  of  sunlight  on 
a  blank  wall,  or  a  reach  of  muddy  pavement,  or 
smoke  from  an  engine  at  night,  there's  a  sudden 
significance  and  importance  and  inspiration  that 
makes  the  breath  stop  with  a  gulp  of  certainty 
and  happiness.  It's  not  that  the  wall  or  the 
smoke  seem  important  for  anything,  or  sud- 
denly reveal  any  general  statement,  or  are  ra- 
tionally seen  to  be  good  or  beautiful  in  them- 
selves,— only  that  for  you  they're  perfect  and 
unique.  It's  like  being  in  love  with  a  person. 
One  doesn't  (nowadays,  and  if  one's  clean- 
minded)  think  the  person  better  or  more  beauti- 
ful or  larger  than  the  truth.  Only  one  is  ex- 
traordinarily excited  that  the  person,  exactly  as 
he  is,  uniquely  and  splendidly  just  exists.  It's 
a  feeling,  not  a  belief.  Only  it's  a  feeling  that 
has  amazing  results.  I  suppose  my  occupation 
is  being  in  love  with  the  universe — or  (for  it's 
an  important  difference),  with  certain  spots  and 
moments  and  points  of  it. 

"I  wish  to  God  I  could  express  myself.  I  have 
a  vague  notion  that  this  is  all  very  incoherent. 
But  the  upshot  of  it  is  that  one's  too  happy  to 
feel  pessimistic;  and  too  much  impressed  by  the 
immense  value  and  potentialities  of  everything  to 


A  MEMOIR  68 

believe  in  pessimism — for  the  following  reason, 
and  in  the  following  sense.  Kvery  action,  one 
knows  (as  a  good  Determinist),  has  an  eternal 
effect.  And  every  action,  therefore,  which  leads 
on  the  whole  to  good,  is  ' frightful} if'  important. 
For  the  good  mystic  knows  how  jolly  'good'  is. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  either  getting  to  Utopia 
in  the  year  2000,  or  not.  There'll  be  so  much 
good  then,  and  so  much  evil.  And  we  can  affect 
it.  There — from  the  purely  rational  point  of 
view — is  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  whole  mat- 
ter. It  oughtn't  to  make  any  difference  to  our 
efforts  whether  the  good  in  2000  a.d.  will  be  a  lot 
greater  than  it  is  now,  or  a  little  greater,  or  less. 
In  any  case,  the  amount  of  good  we  can  cause 
by  doing  something,  or  can  subtract  by  not  doing 
it,  remains  about  the  same.  And  that  is  all  that 
ought  to  matter. 

"Lately,  when  I've  been  reading  up  the  Eliza- 
bethans, and  one  or  two  other  periods,  I've  been 
amazed  more  than  ever  at  the  way  things  change. 
Even  in  talking  to  my  uncle  of  seventy  about 
the  Victorians,  it  comes  out  astoundingly.  The 
whole  machinery  of  life,  and  the  minds  of  every 
class  and  kind  of  man,  change  beyond  recogni- 
tion every  generation.  I  don't  know  that  'Prog- 
ress' is  certain.  All  I  know  is  that  change  is. 
These  solid  solemn  provincials,  and  old  maids. 


64  RUPERT  BROOKE 

and  business  men,  and  all  the  immovable  system 
of  things  I  see  round  me,  will  vanish  like  smoke. 
AH  this  present  overvvhehning  reality  will  be 
as  dead  and  odd  and  fantastic  as  crinolines,  or 
*a  dish  of  tay.'  Something  will  be  in  its  place, 
inevitably.  And  what  that  something  will  be, 
depends  on  me.  With  such  superb  work  to  do, 
and  with  the  wild  adventure  of  it  all,  and  T.-ith 
the  other  minutes  (too  many  of  them)  given  to 
the  enchantment  of  being  even  for  a  moment 
alive  in  a  world  of  real  matter  (not  that  imita- 
tion, gilt,  stuff  one  gets  in  Heaven)  and  actual 
people, — I  have  no  time  now  to  be  a  pessimist. 
"I  don't  know  why  I  have  scribbled  down 
these  thin  insane  vapourings.  I  don't  suppose 
you're  still  as  desperate  as  you  were  when  you 
wrote  in  June.  When  are  you  coming  to  Cam- 
bridge? I  am  going  to  Germany  for  the  spring 
term.  But  if  you  can  get  there  next  term,  are 
you  coming  out  to  stay  at  Grantchester?  I  lead 
a  lovely  and  dim  and  rustic  life  there,  and  have 
divine  food.     Hugh  is  going  to  be  in  London, 

and  is  old  as  the  hills  and  withered  as  a 

spider,  and  I  am  the  oldest  Fabian  left  (except 

,  who  is  senile),  and  I  dodder  about  and 

smile  with  toothless  gums  on  all  the  gay  young 
sparks  of  the  Fabian  Society,  to  whom  I  am 
more  than  a  father. 


A  MEMOIR  65 

"So  you  might  tell  me  if  you  are  going  to  shake 
off  for  a  day  or  a  month  the  ghastly  coils  of 
British  Family  I^ife  and  of  Modern  Industry 
that  you  are  wound  in,  and  come  to  see  the  bo- 
vine existence  of  a  farmer. 

"In  the  name  of  God  and  the  Republic, 

RuPEfiT." 

The  next  event  was  a  journey  on  the  Conti- 
nent at  the  beginning  of  1911.  lie  conceived 
romantic  plans  for  it,  as  appears  in  the  latter  part 
of  this  letter  to  Geoffrey  Fry,  written  before  he 
started,  to  thank  for  a  present  of  Mr.  Bullen's 
Elizabethan  Songbooks:  "I  read  them  when  I 
ought  to  be  learning  German,  and  I  writhe  with 
vain  passion  and  with  envy.  How  did  they  do  it? 
Was  it,  as  we're  told,  because  they  always  wrote 
to  tunes?  The  lightness!  There  are  moments 
when  I  try  to  write  'songs',  'where  Lumpkin 
with  his  Giles  hobnobs',  but  they  are  bumping 
rustic  guffaws.  I  feel  that  sense  of  envious  in- 
competence and  a  vast  angry  clumsiness  that 
hippopotamuses  at  the  Zoo  must  feel  when  you 
stand  before  them  with  your  clouded  cane  and 
take  snuff.  They're  occasionally — the  song- 
books,  not  the  hippopotamuses — so  like  the  An- 
thology, and  oh!  I  can  see  why  Headlam  loved 
them. 


66  RUPERT  BROOKE 

"I  may  see  you  yet  in  England.  For  I  don't 
go  till  January  8  or  so.  But  when  I  do  go,  ahal 
England  will  never  see  me  more.  I  shall  grow 
my  red  whiskers  and  take  to  Art.  In  a  few  years 
you  may  come  and  stay  with  me  in  my  villa  at 
Syharis,  or  my  palace  near  Smyrna,  or  my  tent 
at  Kandahar,  or  my  yacht  olF  the  Cyclades.  But 
you  will  he  a  respectahle  lawyer.  You  will  wag- 
gle your  pince-nez  and  lecture  me  on  my  harem. 
Then  a  large  one-eyed  negro  Eunuch  will  come 
and  tie  you  up  and  pitch  you  into  the  sea.  And 
I  shall  continue  to  paint  sea-scapes  in  scarlet  and 
umber." 

These  dreams  were  not  realised.  He  began  his 
travels  with  three  months  in  ^lunich,  where  he 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Cornford  in  the  middle  of  Febru- 
ary: "The  worst  of  solitude — or  the  best — is, 
that  one  begins  poking  at  his  own  soul,  examin- 
ing it,  cutting  the  soft  and  rotten  parts  away. 
And  where's  one  to  stop?  Have  you  ever  had, 
at  lunch  or  dinner,  an  over-ripe  pear  or  apple, 
and,  determined  to  make  the  best  of  it,  gone  on 
slicing  off  the  squashy  bits?  You  may  imagine 
me,  in  JMiinchen,  at  a  German  lunch  with  Life, 
discussing  hard,  and  cutting  away  at  the  bad 
parts  of  the  dessert.  'Oh!'  says  Ivife,  courteous 
as  ever,  'I'm  sure  you've  got  a  bad  soul  there. 
Please  don't  go  on  with  it!    Leave  it,  and  take 


A  MEMOIR  67 

another!  I'm  so  sorry!'  But,  knowing  I've 
taken  the  last,  and  polite  anyhow,  'Oh,  no, 
please!'  I  say,  scraping  away.  'It's  really  all 
right.  It's  only  a  little  gone,  here  and  there, 
on  the  outside.  Tliere's  plenty  that's  quite  good. 
I'm  quite  enjoying  it.  You  always  have  such 
delightful  souls!'  .  .  .  And  after  a  minute,  when 
there's  a  circle  of  messy  brown  rounding  my 
plate,  and  in  the  centre  a  rather  woe-begone 
brown-white  thin  shapeless  scrap,  the  centre  of 
the  thing.  Life  breaks  in  again,  seeing  my  plight. 
— 'Oh,  but  you  can't  touch  any  of  that !  It's  bad 
right  through!  I'm  sure  Something  must  have 
got  in  to  it!  Let  me  ring  for  another!  There's 
sure  to  be  some  in  the  larder.'  .  .  .  But  it  won't 
do,  you  know.  So  I  rather  ruefully  reply,  'Ye-es, 
I'm  afraid  it  is  impossible.  But  I  won't  have 
another,  thanks.  I  don't  really  want  one  at  all. 
I  only  took  it  out  of  mere  greed,  and  to  have 
something  to  do.  Thank  you,  I've  had  quite 
enough — such  excellent  meat  and  pudding!  I've 
done  splendidly — But  to  go  on  with  our  con- 
versation ABOUT  Literature, — you  were  say- 
ing, I  think  .  .  .  ?'  and  so  the  incident's  at  an 
end. 

"Dear!  dear!  it's  very  trying  being  so  exalted 
one  day  and  ever  so  desperate  the  next — this 
Self-knowledge  (why  did  that  old  fool  class  it 


68  RUPERT  BROOKE 

with  Self-reverence  and  Self-control?  They're 
rarely  seen  together  1)  But  so  one  lives  in 
Munich. 

" — And  then  your  letter  came!  So  many 
thanks.  It  made  me  shake  with  joy  to  know  that 
Cambridge  and  England  (as  I  know  it)  was  all 
as  fine  as  ever.  That  Jac(iues  and  Ka  should 
be  sitting  in  a  cafe,  looking  just  like  themselves 
— oh  God!  what  an  incredibly  lovely  superb 
world.  I  fairly  howled  my  triumph  down  the 
ways  of  this  splendid  city.  'Oh!  you  fat,  muddy- 
faced,  grey,  jolly  Germans  who  despise  me  be- 
cause I  don't  know  your  rotten  language!  Oh! 
the  people  I  know,  and  you  don't !  Oh !  you  poor 
things !'  And  they  all  growl  at  me  because  they 
don't  know  why  I  glory  over  them.  But,  of 
course,  part  of  the  splendour  is  that — if  they 
only  knew  it — they  too,  these  Germans,  are  all 
sitting  in  cafes  and  looking  just  like  themselves. 
That  knowledge  sets  me  often  dreaming  in  a 
vague,  clerical,  world-misty  spirit  over  my  soli- 
tary coif ee,  in  one  of  the  innumerable  cafes  here 
in  which  I  spend  my  days.  I  find  myself  smiling 
a  dim,  gentle,  poetic,  paternal,  Jehovah-like 
smile — over  the  ultimate  excellence  of  humanity 
— at  people  of,  obviously,  the  most  frightful  lives 
and  reputations  at  otlier  tables;  who  come  pres- 
ently sidling  towards  me.     My  mysticism  van- 


A  MEMOIR  69 

ishes,  and  in  immense  terror  I  fly  suddenly  into 
the  street. 

"Oh,  but  they're  a  kindly  people.  Every  night 
I  sit  in  a  cafe  near  here,  after  the  opera,  and  read 
the  day-old  Times  ( !)  and  drink — prepare  to 
hear  the  depths  of  debauchery  into  which  the 
young  are  led  in  these  wicked  foreign  cities! — 
HOT  MILK,  a  large  glassful.  Last  night  I  spilt 
the  whole  of  the  hot  milk  over  myself,  while  I 
was  trying  to  negotiate  the  Literary  Supple- 
ment. You've  no  idea  how  much  of  one  a  large 
glass  of  hot  milk  will  cover.  I  was  entirely  white, 
except  for  my  scarlet  face.  All  the  people  in 
the  cafe  crowded  round  and  dabbed  me  with 
dirty  pocket-handkerchiefs.  A  kindly  people. 
Xor  did  I  give  in.  I  ordered  more  hot  milk  and 
finished  my  Supplement,  damp  but  Interna- 
tional. 

*'No!  Cambridge  isn't  very  dim  and  distant, 
nor  Dent  a  pink  shade.  I  somehow  manage, 
these  days,  to  be  aware  of  two  places  at  once.  I 
used  to  find  it  wasn't  worth  while;  and  to  think 
that  the  great  thing  was  to  let  go  completely  of 
a  thing  when  you've  done  with  it,  and  turn  wholly 
and  freshly  to  the  next.  'Being  able  to  take  and 
to  let  go  and  to  take,  and  knowing  when  to  take 
and  when  to  let  go,  and  knowing  that  life's  this — 
is  the  only  way  to  happiness'  is  the  burden  of  the 


70  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Marschallin  in  the  RoscncavaUer  (the  rage  of 
Germany  just  now).  There's  some  truth  in  it. 
But  sometimes,  now,  I  find  I  can  weave  two  ex- 
istences together  and  enjoy  both,  and  be  aware 
of  the  unique  things  of  each.  It's  true  that  as 
I  write  there's  an  attitude  of  Jacques's,  or  a  slow 
laugh  of  Ka's,  or  a  moon  at  Grantchester,  or  a 
speech  of  Dickinson's,  that  I'd  love,  and  that  I'm 
missing.  But  there'll  be  other  such,  no  doubt,  in 
INIay  and  June — and  what  if  I'd  not  met  the 
lovable  Mr.  Leuba  (and  so  differently  lovable 
from  an  English  unsuccessful  journalist!)  or  the 
fascinating  Miss  Something  or  Other  of  Paris, 
or  the  interesting  and  wicked  di  Ravelli,  or  Dr. 
Wolfskell  who  is  shy  and  repeats  Swinburne  in 
large  quantities  with  a  villainous  German  accent 
but  otherwise  knows  no  English,  or  that  bearded 
man  in  the  cafe,  or  the  great  Hegedus,  or  Pro- 
fessor Sametscu?  .  .  . 

"Eh,  but  I  have  grown  clerical  and  solemn  and 
moral.  That  is  because  I've  been  seeing  so  much 
Ibsen  lately.  I  apologise.  I'm  old-fashioned 
enough  to  admire  that  man  vastly.  I've  seen  five 
or  six  of  his  plays  in  four  weeks.  They  always 
leave  me  prostrate. 

"No,  I've  not  yet  been  proposed  to  by  young 
ladies  in  plaid  blouses,  not  even  one  at  a  time. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  I  know  only  one  or  two 


A  MEMOIR  71 

such.  Most  of  the  people  I  see  are  working  at 
some  sensible  thinij  like  writing,  music,  or  paint- 
ing, and  are  free  and  comradely.  I  made  one 
or  two  incursions  into  Anglo-German  Philistia, 
and  came  hurriedly  forth.  I'm  damnably  sorry 
for  the  plaid  blouses  (who  do  exist  there,  and  are, 
at  present,  so  much  better  than  their  mothers). 
I  saw  two  stifling  and  crying.  But  I'm  not  going 
back  to  rescue  them. 

"But  in  ordinary,  and  nicer,  ways,  I  meet  a 
lot  of  jolly  people.  It's  true,  a  lot,  I  think,  what 
you  say  about  friends ;  but  oh,  dear  people !  it  is 
fun  going  away  and  making  thousands  of  ac- 
quaintances. 

"1  finish  this  tourist's  effusion  at  2  o'  the  morn- 
ing, sitting  up  in  bed,  with  my  army  blanket 
round  me.  My  feet,  infinitely  disconnected,  and 
southward,  inform  me  that  to-night  it  is  freez- 
ing again.  The  bed  is  covered  with  Elizabethan 
and  German  books  I  may  or  may  not  read  ere 
I  sleep.  In  the  distance  glimmers  the  gaunt 
white  menacing  Ibsenite  stove  that  casts  a  gloom 
over  my  life.  The  Algerian  dancing-master  next 
door  is,  for  once,  quiet.  I  rather  think  the 
Dragon  overhead  (the  Dragon  =-  that  mon- 
strous, tired-faced,  screeching,  j)ouchy  creature, 
of  infinite  age  i  nd  horror,  who  screams  opposite 
me  at  dinner  and  talks  with  great  crags  of  food 


72  RUPERT  BROOKE 

projecting  from  her  mouth;  a  decayed  Countess, 
they  say)  is  snoring. 

"Oh,  I  sometimes  make  a  picture  of  Conduit 
Head,  with  Jacques  in  a  corner,  and  Gwen  on 
other  cushions,  and  Justin  on  his  back,  and  Ka 
on  a  footstool,  and  Francis  smoking,  and  Frances 
in  the  chair  to  the  right  (facing  the  fire).  .  .  . 
It  stands  out  against  the  marble  of  the  Luitpold 
Cafe  and  then  fades.  .   .  .  But  say  it's  true  I 

"Even  with  an  enormous  stomach  and  a  beard 
and  in  Munich. — Yours,  Rupert." 

From  Munich  he  went  to  join  his  godfather, 
Mr.  Robert  Whitelaw,  in  Florence,  where  he 
wrote  to  me  at  the  end  of  April:  "I  led  a  most 
noisome  life  in  Munich,  crawling  about  in  trams, 
and  eating,  and  sleeping.  I  never  thought,  and 
barely  ever  read.  I  worked  hard  in  an  intermit- 
tent doleful  way,  but  never  accomplished  any- 
thing. I  spent  two  months  over  a  poem  that  de- 
scribes the  feelings  of  a  fish,  in  the  metre  of 
L' Allegro.  It  was  meant  to  be  a  lyric,  but  has 
turned  into  a  work  of  76  lines  with  a  moral  end. 
It's  quite  unintelligible.  Beyond  that  I  have 
written  one  or  two  severe  and  subtle  sonnets  in 
my  most  modern  manner — descriptions  of  very 
poignant  and  complicated  situations  in  the  life 


A  MEMOIR  78 

of  to-day,  thrilling  with  a  false  simplicity.  The 
one  beginning 

'I  did  not  think  you  thought  I  knew  you  knew' 

has  created  a  sensation  in  English-speaking  cir- 
cles in  ^Munich. 

"I  have  sampled  and  sought  out  German  cul- 
ture. It  has  changed  all  my  political  views.  I 
am  wildly  in  favour  of  nineteen  new  Dread- 
noughts. German  culture  must  never,  never 
prevail!  The  Germans  are  nice,  and  well-mean- 
ing, and  they  try;  but  they  are  soft.  Oh!  they 
are  soft!  The  only  good  things  (outside  music 
perhaps)  are  the  %vi'itings  of  Jews  who  live  in 
Vienna.  Have  you  ever  heard  of  Mr.  Schnitz- 
ler's  historical  play?  They  act  an  abbreviated 
version  which  lasts  from  7  to  12.  I  saw  it.  A 
Hebrew  journahst's  version  of  the  Dynasts^  but 
rather  good. 

"Here  I  live  in  a  pension  surrounded  by  Eng- 
lish clergymen  and  ladies.  They  are  all  Forster 
characters.  Perhaps  it  is  his  pension.^  But  to 
live  among  Forster  characters  is  too  bewildering. 
The  'quaint'  remarks  fall  all  round  one  during 
meal-times,  with  little  soft  plups  like  pats  of 
butter.  'So  strong,'  they  said,  next  to  me,  at  the 
concert  last  night,  of  the  Fifth  Symphony;  'and 

*  See  E.  M.  Forster's  "A  Room  with  a  View." 


74  RUPERT  BROOKE 

yet  so  restful,  my  dear!  not  at  all  what  I  should 
call  morbid,  you  know!'  Just  now  the  young 
parson  and  his  wife,  married  a  fortnight,  have 
been  conversing.  'Are  you  ready  to  kick  off?' 
he  said.  How  extraordinary!  What  does  it 
mean?  I  gathered  it  merely  meant  was  she 
dressed  for  San  Lorenzo.  But  does  the  Church 
talk  like  that  nowadays? 

"So  I  am  seeing  life.  But  I  am  thirsting  for 
Grantchester.  I  am  no  longer  to  be  at  The 
Orchard,  but  next  door  at  The  Old  Vicarage, 
with  a  wonderfid  garden.  I  shall  fly  from  Flor- 
ence, which  is  full  of  painstaking  ugly  pictures. 
But  before  I  go  I've  got  to  settle  the  question, 
'Shall  I  lay  a  handful  of  roses  on  INIrs.  Brown- 
ing's grave?  and,  if  so,  how  many?'  These  liter- 
ary problems  are  dreadful.  And  the  English 
Cemetery  is  so  near!" 

"It's  very  late,"  he  wrote  one  evening  to  the 
Raverats.  "The  stars  over  Fiesole  are  wonder- 
ful; and  there  are  quiet  cypresses  and  a  straight 
white  wall  opposite.  I  renounce  England; 
though  at  present  I've  the  senile  affection  of  a 
godfather  for  it.  I  think  of  it,  over  there  (be- 
yond even  Fiesole) — Gwen  and  Jacques  and  Ka 
and  Frances  and  Justin  and  Dudley,  and  Dr. 
Verrall  and  the  Master,  and  Lord  Esher  and  Mr. 
Balfour.    Good-night,  children." 


A  MEMOIR  75 


IV 


The  Old  Vicarage,  which  was  his  home  in  1911, 
is  a  long,  low,  ramshackle,  tumble-down  one- 
storied  house,  with  attics  in  a  high  roof,  and  a 
verandah.  It  has  a  ])r()fuse,  overgrown,  sweet- 
smelling,  'most  individual  and  bewildering'  gar- 
den, with  random  trees  and  long  grass,  and  here 
and  there  odd  relics  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a 
sundial  sticking  out  from  the  dried-up  basin  of 
a  round  pond,  and  an  imitation  ruin  in  a  corner. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  year  it  is  a  little  mel- 
ancholy. "The  garden,"  he  wrote  in  September, 
"is  immeasurably  autumnal,  sad,  mysterious,  au- 
gust. I  walk  in  it  feeling  like  a  fly  crawling  on 
the  score  of  the  Fifth  Symphony";  and  in  De- 
cember he  called  it  a  House  of  Usher.  But  in 
summer  it's  a  paradise  of  scent  and  colour. 
"You'll  find  me  quite  wild  with  reading  and  the 
country,"  he  wrote  in  an  invitation.  "Come  pre- 
pared for  bathing,  and  clad  in  primitive  clothes. 
Bring  books  also:  one  talks  eight  hours,  reads 
eight,  and  sleeps  eight." 

Here  is  a  morning  of  about  this  time,  in  a  let- 
ter to  Miss  Katherine  Cox:  "I  worked  till  1, 
and  then  ran  nearly  to  Ilaslingfield  and  back 
before  lunch,  thinking  over  the  next  bits.    There 


76  RUPERT  BROOKE 

was  such  clearness  and  frosty  sun.  Some  men 
under  a  haystack,  eating  tlieir  hinch,  shouted 
how  fine  a  day  it  was.  I  shouted  back  it  was 
very  cold ;  and  ran  on.  They  roared  with  laugh- 
ter and  shouted  after  me  that  with  that  fine  crop 
of  hair  I  oughtn't  to  be  cold.  ...  It  was  wonder- 
ful and  very  clean  out  there.  I  thought  of  all 
you  Londoners,  dirty  old  drivellers!  Now  I'm 
come  in  to  rehearse  my  nigger  part  [as  a  super 
in  the  Magic  FIute'\  and  to  work.  I've  realised 
that  taking  part  in  theatrical  performances  is 
the  only  thing  worth  doing.  And  it's  so  very 
nice  being  an  intelligent  subordinate.  I'm  a  very 
good  subordinate — it's  such  a  test.  I'm  thought 
not  to  dance  well :  but  my  intelligence  and  devo- 
tion have  brought  me  rapidly  to  the  front.  I 
am  now  the  most  important  of  7  negroes!" 

He  was  now  working  at  the  first  draft  of  his 
dissertation  on  John  Webster,  which  he  sent  in 
at  the  end  of  the  year.  "I've  wallowed  in  Web- 
ster-Texts all  day,"  he  wrote  in  September.  "If 
only  I  didn't  want,  at  the  same  time,  to  be  read- 
ing everything  else  in  the  world,  I  should  be  in- 
finitely happy."  He  didn't  get  the  Fellowship 
till  next  year. 

He  was  also  preparing  the  book  of  Poems 
which  ^lessrs.  Sidgwick  &  Jackson  published  in 
December.    It  had  a  mixed  reception,  both  from 


A  MEMOIR  77 

his  friends  and  from  the  critics.  I  was  lucky 
enough  to  take  it  in  a  way  which  pleased  him; 
and  he  rewarded  me  with  the  following  letter, 
which  is  too  informing  to  be  left  out,  though  I 
would  rather  it  fell  to  someone  else  to  print  it: 
"Your  letter  gave  me  great  joy.  I  horribly  feel 
that  degrading  ecstasy  that  I  have  always  de- 
spised in  parents  whose  shapeless  offspring  are 
praised  for  beauty.  People  are  queer  about  my 
poems.  Some  that  I  know  very  well  and  have 
great  syvvpathie  with,  don't  like  them.  Some 
people  seem  to  like  them.  Some  like  only  the 
early  ones — them  considerably,  but  the  others 
not  at  all.  These  rather  sadden  me.  I  hobnob 
vaguely  with  them  over  the  promising  verses  of 
a  young  poet,  called  Rupert  Brooke,  who  died 
in  1908.  But  I'm  so  much  more  concerned 
with  the  living,  who  doesn't  interest  them. 
God!  it's  so  cheering  to  find  someone  who  likes 
the  modern  stuff,  and  appreciates  what  one's  at. 
You  can't  think  how  your  remarks  and  liking 
thrilled  me.  You  seemed,  both  in  your  classing 
them  and  when  you  got  to  details,  to  agree  so 
closely  with  what  I  felt  about  them  (only,  of 
course,  I  often  feel  doubtful  about  their  rela- 
tive value  to  other  poetry)  that  I  knew  you 
understood  what  they  meant.  It  sounds  a  poor 
compliment — or  else  a  queer  conceitedness — to 


78  RUPERT  BROOKE 

remark  on  your  understanding  them;  but  it's 
really  been  rather  a  shock  to  me— and  made  me 
momentarily  hopeless — that  so  many  intelligent 
and  well-tasted  people  didn't  seem  to  have  any 
idea  what  1  was  driving  at,  in  any  poem  of  the 
last  few  years.  It  opened  my  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  people  who  like  poetry  are  barely  more 
common  than  people  who  like  pictures. 

"I'm  (of  course)  unrepentant  about  the  'un- 
pleasant' poems.^  I  don't  claim  great  merit  for 
the  Channel  Passage:  but  the  point  of  it  was  (or 
should  have  beenl)  'serious.'  There  are  com- 
mon and  sordid  things — situations  or  details — 
that  may  suddenly  bring  all  tragedy,  or  at  least 
the  brutality  of  actual  emotions,  to  you.  I  rather 
grasp  relievedly  at  them,  after  I've  beaten  vain 
hands  in  the  rosy  mists  of  poets'  experiences. 
Lear's  button,  and  Hilda  Lessways  turning  the 
gas  suddenly  on,  and — but  you  know  more  of 
them  than  I.  Shakespeare's  not  unsympathetic. 
*My  mistress'  eyes  are  nothing  like  the  sun.' 
And  the  emotions  of  a  sea-sick  lover  seem  to  me 
at  least  as  poignant  as  those  of  the  hero  who  has 
'brain-fever.' 

"JSIrs.  Cornford  tried  to  engage  me  in  a  con- 
troversy over  the  book — she  and  her  school.  They 

'  I   lind   expressed   an   apologetic  preference  for  p>oems  that  I 
could  read  at  meals. 


A  MEJNIOIR  79 

are  known  as  the  Heart-criers,  because  they  be- 
lieve all  poetry  ought  to  be  short,  simple,  naive, 
and  a  cry  from  the  heart;  the  sort  of  thing  an 
inspired  only  child  might  utter  if  it  was  in  the 
habit  of  posing  to  its  elders.  They  object  to 
my  poetry  as  unreal,  affected,  complex,  'literary,' 
and  full  of  long  words.  I'm  re-writing  English 
literature  on  their  lines.  Do  you  think  this  is 
a  fair  rendering  of  Shakespeare's  first  twenty 
sonnets,  if  jNIrs.  Cornford  had  had  the  doing  of 
them? 

Triolet 

If  you  would  only  have  a  son, 

William,  the  day  would  be  a  glad  one. 

It  would  be  nice  for  everyone. 

If  you  would  only  have  a  son. 

And,  William,  what  would  you  have  done 
If  Lady  Pembroke  hadn't  had  one? 

If  you  would  only  have  a  son, 

William,  the  day  would  be  a  glad  one ! 

It  seems  to  me  to  have  got  the  kernel  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  stripped  away  all  unnecessary  verbiage 
or  conscious  adornment." 

The  verdicts  of  the  newspapers  varied  from 
that  of  the  Saturdaif  Review,  which  "definitely 
told  Mr.  Rupert  Brooke  to  'mar  no  more  trees 
with  writing  love-songs  in  their  barks,'  "  to  that 


80  RUPERT  BROOKE 

of  the  Daily  Chronicle,  which  prophesied,  by  the 
mouth  of  Edward  Thomas,  that  he  would  be  a 
poet,  and  not  a  httle  one.  It  may  be  said  that  in 
general  the  book  was  received  with  a  good  deal 
of  interest,  and  hailed  ay  at  least  promising. 
Many  of  the  critics  seemed  so  struck  with  the 
'unpleasant'  poems  (seven,  at  most,  out  of  fifty) 
that  they  could  hardly  notice  the  others.  This 
showed,  perhaps,  a  wrong  sense  of  proportion; 
but  the  autlior's  own  point  of  view  about  them 
is  certainly  a  matter  of  interest,  and  though  the 
purpose  of  this  memoir  is  not  critical,  it  may  be 
worth  while  here  to  put  together  some  of  its 
factors,  besides  those  which  appear  from  the  let- 
ter I  have  just  quoted.  It  is,  of  course,  absurdly 
untrue  that,  as  has  been  said,  he  felt  he  ought  to 
make  up  for  his  personal  beauty  by  being  ugly 
in  his  poetry.  To  begin  with,  ugliness  had  a 
quite  unaffected  attraction  for  him;  he  thought 
it  just  as  interesting  as  anything  else;  he  didn't 
like  it — he  loathed  it — but  he  liked  thinking  about 
it.  'The  poetical  character,'  as  Keats  said,  'lives 
in  gusto.'  Then  he  still  had  at  this  age  (24)  a 
good  deal  of  what  soon  afterwards  faded  com- 
pletely away — the  bravado,  the  feeling  that  it 
was  fun  to  shock  and  astonish  the  respectable, 
which  came  out  in  his  school  letters.  Again,  he 
was  incensed  by  the  usual  attitude  of  criticism — 


A  MEMOIR  81 

in  his  view,  either  stupid  or  hypocritical — to- 
wards 'coarseness'  in  literature.  "Indeed,"  he 
MTote  earlj'  this  year  in  a  review,  "the  Elizabeth- 
ans tvcre  refined.  Their  stories  were  shocking, 
their  thoughts  nasty,  their  language  indelicate. 
It  is  absurd  to  want  them  otherwise.  It  is  in- 
tolerable that  these  critics  should  shake  the  peda- 
gogic   finger    of    amazed    reproval    at    them. 

Such  people  do  not  understand  that 

the  vitality  of  the  Elizabethan  Drama  is  insepa- 
rable from  [its  coarseness].  Their  wail  that  its 
realism  is  mingled  with  indecency  is  more  than 
once  repeated.  True  literary  realism,  they  think, 
is  a  fearless  reproduction  of  what  real  living  men 
say  when  there  is  a  clergj^man  in  the  room."  The 
feeling  here  expressed  urged  him  to  make  a  dem- 
onstration; it  dignified  the  boyish  impulse  into 
a  duty. 

To  conclude  this  subject  I  will  quote  a  letter 
to  his  publisher  about  the  sonnet  Libido^  to  which 
the  original  title  Lust  is  now  restored:  "My 
own  feeling  is  that  to  remove  it  would  be  to  over- 
balance the  book  still  more  in  the  direction  of  un- 
important prettiness.  There's  plenty  of  that 
sort  of  wash  in  the  other  pages  for  the  readers 
who  like  it.  They  needn't  read  the  ])arts  which 
are  new  and  serious.  About  a  lot  of  the  book  I 
occasionally  feel  that  like  Ox^helia  I've  turned 


82  RUPERT  BROOKE 

'thought  and  affliction,  passion,  hell  itself,  to  fa- 
vour and  to  prettiness.'  So  I'm  extra  keen  about 
the  places  where  I  think  that  thought  and  pas- 
sion are,  however  clumsily,  not  so  transmuted. 
This  was  one  of  them.  It  seemed  to  have  quali- 
ties of  reality  and  novelty  that  made  up  for  the 
clumsiness.  ...  I  should  like  it  to  stand,  as  a 
representative  in  the  book  of  abortive  poetry 
against  literary  verse;  and  because  I  can't  see 
any  aesthetic  ground  against  it  which  would  not 
damn  three-quarters  of  the  rest  of  the  book  too; 
or  any  moral  ground  at  all." 

During  all  this  time  he  was  working  up  to  a 
rather  serious  illness.  As  a  child  and  as  a  boy  he 
had  been  delicate,  but  at  Cambridge  his  health 
had  greatly  improved,  and  all  the  time  he  was 
there  he  never  had  to  go  to  a  doctor.  Now, 
however,  he  left  his  open-air  life  and  came  to 
London  for  work  on  Webster.  "He  lived,"  his 
^lother  tells  me,  "in  wretched  rooms  in  Charlotte 
Street,  spending  all  day  at  the  British  ]\Iuseum, 
going  round  to  his  friends  in  the  evening  and 
sitting  up  most  of  the  night.  He  then  went  to 
Grantchester  to  finish  his  dissertation,  and  from 
his  brother's  account  scarcely  went  to  bed  at  all 
for  a  week,  several  times  working  all  night.  He 
came  home  for  Christmas  quite  tired  out."    The 


A  MEMOIR  83 

letter  to  me  which  I  last  quoted,  written  at  Rug- 
by on  the  22nd  of  December,  ends  with  this: 
"I'm  sorn'  I  never  saw  you  again.  The  last  part 
of  Xovember  and  the  first  of  December  I  spent 
in    writing    my    dissertation    at    Grantchester. 

I  couldn't  do  it  at  all  well.    I  came  to 

London  in  a  dilapidated  condition  for  a  day  or 
two  after  it  was  over.  Now  I'm  here  over  Christ- 
mas. About  the  27th  I  go  to  Lulworth  with  a 
reading-party  for  a  fortnight.  Then  to  the 
South  of  France,  then  Germany  .  .  .  and  the 
future's  mere  mist.  I  want  to  stay  out  of  Eng- 
land for  some  time.  (1)  I  don't  like  it.  (2)1 
want  to  work — a  play,  and  so  on.  (3)  I'm  rather 
tii-ed  and  dejected. 

"So  I  probably  shan't  be  in  London  for  some 
time.  If  I  am,  I'll  let  you  know.  I'm  going  to 
try  to  do  scraps — reviewing,  etc. — in  my  spare 
time  for  the  immediate  future.  I  suppose  you 
don't  edit  a  magazine?  I  might  review  Eliza- 
bethan books  at  some  length  for  the  Admiralty 
Gazette  or  T.A.T.  (Tattle  amongst  Tars),  or 
whatever  journal  you  officially  produce?  At 
least  I  hope  you'll  issue  an  order  to  include  my 
poems  in  the  library  of  all  submarines." 

His  next  letter  is  of  February  25th,  1912, 
from  Rugby:  'T  went  to  Lulworth  after  Christ- 
mas for  a  reading  party.    There  I  collapsed  sud- 


84  RUPERT  BROOKE 

denly  into  a  foodless  and  sleepless  Hell.  Godl 
how  one  can  suffer  from  what  my  amiable  spe- 
cialist described  as  a  'nervous  breakdown.'  (He 
reported  that  I  had  got  into  a  'seriously  intro- 
spective condition'!  and — more  tangibly — that 
my  weiglit  had  gone  down  a  stone  or  two.)  I 
tottered,  being  too  tired  for  suicide,  to  Cannes, 

not  because  I  like  the  b place,  but  because 

my  mother  happened  to  be  there.  I  flapped 
slowly  towards  the  surface  there;  and  rose  a  lit- 
tle more  at  IVIunich.  I  have  come  here  for  a 
month  or  two  to  complete  it.  After  that  I  shall 
be  allowed  (and,  by  Pha4)us,  able,  1  hope)  to 
do  some  work.  ]My  cure  consists  in  perpetual 
over-eating  and  over-sleeping,  no  exercise,  and 
no  thought.  Rather  a  nice  existence,  but  oh 
God!  weary." 

In  ]\Iarch  he  went  for  a  walk  in  Sussex  with 
James  Strachey,  and  sent  JMiss  Cox  a  sensational 
account,  dated  from  'The  Mermaid  Club,  Rye,' 
of  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  visit  a  great  man 
whose  acquaintance  he  had  made  at  Cambridge. 
"I  read  the  'Way  of  All  Flesh'  and  talk  to 
James.  James  and  I  have  been  out  this  evening 
to  call  on  ]\Ir.  Henry  James  at  9.0.  AVe  found — 
at  length — the  house.  It  was  inmiensely  rich, 
and  brilliantly  lighted  at  every  window  on  the 


A  MEMOIR  85 

ground  floor.  The  upper  floors  were  deserted: 
one  black  window  open.  The  house  is  straight 
on  the  street.  We  nearly  fainted  with  fear  of 
a  company.  At  length  I  pressed  the  Bell  of  the 
Great  Door — there  was  a  smaller  door  further 
along,  the  servants'  door  we  were  told.  No  an- 
swer. I  pressed  again.  At  length  a  slow  drag- 
ging step  was  heard  within.  It  stopped  inside 
the  door.  We  shuffled.  Then,  very  slowly,  very 
loudly,  immense  numbers  of  chains  and  bolts 
were  drawn  within.  There  was  a  pause  again. 
Further  rattling  within.  Then  the  steps  seemed 
to  be  heard  retreating.  There  was  silence.  We 
waited  in  a  wild  agonising  stupefaction.  The 
house  was  dead  silent.  At  length  there  was  a 
shuffling  noise  from  the  servants'  door.  We 
thought  someone  was  about  to  emerge  from  there 
to  greet  us.  We  slid  down  towards  it — nothing 
happened.  We  drew  back  and  observed  the 
house.  A  low  whistle  came  from  it.  Then  noth- 
ing for  two  minutes.  Suddenly  a  shadow  passed 
quickly  across  the  light  in  the  window  nearest 
the  door.  Again  nothing  happened.  James  and 
I,  sick  with  surmise,  stole  down  the  street.  We 
thought  we  heard  another  whistle,  as  we  de- 
parted. We  came  back  here  shaking — we  didn't 
know  at  what. 

"If  the  evening  paper,  as  you  get  this,  tells  of 


86  RUPERT  BROOKE 

the  murder  of  Mr.  Henry  James — you'll  know." 
By  this  time  he  was  quite  well  again.  He  went 
to  Germany  in  April,  and  stayed  there  for  two 
or  three  months,  mostly  uith  Dudley  Ward  in 
Berlin,  where  he  wrote  The  Old  Vicarage, 
Grantchester  ^  ('this  hurried  stuff,'  he  called  it 
when  he  sent  it  me).  "I  read  Elizahethans  for 
2-3  hours  a  day,  quite  happily,"  he  wrote  to  his 
^lother.  "Other  work  I  haven't  tried  much.  I 
started  a  short  play,  and  worked  at  it  for  two  or 
three  hours.  I  paid  the  penalty  by  not  getting 
to  sleep  till  5  next  morning."  The  play  was  a 
one-act  melodrama  called  Lithuaiiia,  founded  on 
the  well-known  anecdote  of  a  son  coming  back 
with  a  fortune,  after  years  of  absence  in  Amer- 
ica, to  his  peasant-family,  who  kill  him  for  his 
money  and  then  find  out  who  he  was.  (It  was 
acted  in  the  spring  of  1916  by  Miss  Lillah 
McCarthy,  Miss  Clare  Greet,  Leon  M.  Lion, 
John  Drinkwater,  and  others,  at  a  charity  mat- 
inee at  His  Majesty's,  together  with  Gordon 
Bottomley's  King  Lear's  Wife  and  Wilfrid  Gib- 
son's Hoops;  and  was  thought  to  show  much 
promise  of  dramatic  power.) 

He  came  home  from  Germany  as  well  as  ever, 
to  spend  the  rest  of  the  sunmier  at  Grantchester. 

^This  poem  was  first  published  in  the  King's  raagnzine  Basileon- 
The  MS.  is  now  in  the  Fitzwilliaru  Museum, 


A  MEMOIR  87 

I  must  here  touch  upon  a  change  in  his  out- 
look, a  development  of  liis  character,  which,  as 
I  think,  took  form  during  this  year  from  the 
germs  which  may  he  seen  in  his  earher  letters, 
already  quoted,  to  Mr.  Cotterill  and  to  Ben  Keel- 
ing. Perhaps  it  was  the  result  of  the  'introspec- 
tion' which  contributed  to  his  illness,  and  to 
which  his  illness  in  its  turn  gave  opportunity. 
To  put  it  briefly  and  bluntly,  he  had  discovered 
that  goodness  was  the  most  important  thing  in 
life — 'that  immortal  beauty  and  goodness,'  as  he 
wrote  much  later,  'that  radiance,  to  love  which 
is  to  feel  one  has  safely  hold  of  eternal  things.' 
Since  he  grew  up  he  had  never  held  ( and  did  not 
now  acquire)  any  definite,  still  less  any  ready- 
made,  form  of  religious  belief;  his  ideals  had  been 
mainly  intellectual;  and  if  he  had  been  asked  to 
define  goodness,  he  would  probably  have  said 
that  it  meant  having  true  opinions  about  ethics. 
Now  he  found  that  it  was  even  more  a  matter  of 
the  heart  and  of  the  will;  and  he  did  not  shrink 
from  avowing  his  changed  view  to  his  old  com- 
rades in  the  life  of  the  mind,  some  of  whom  per- 
haps found  it  a  little  disconcerting,  a  little  ridicu- 
lous. 

Henceforward  the  only  thing  that  he  cared  for 
— or  rather  felt  he  ought  to  care  for — in  a  man, 
was  the  possession  of  goodness;  its  absence,  the 


88  RUPERT  BROOKE 

one  thing  that  he  hated,  sometimes  with  fierce- 
ness. He  never  codified  his  morals,  never  made 
laws  for  the  conduct  of  others,  or  for  his  own;  it 
was  the  spirit,  the  passion,  that  counted  with  him. 
"That  is  the  final  rule  of  life,  the  best  one  ever 
made,"  he  wrote  next  year  from  the  Pacific, — 
"  'Whoso  shall  offend  one  of  these  little  one^.' — 
remembering  that  all  the  eight  hundred  millions 
on  earth,  except  oneself,  are  the  little  ones." 

In  the  autumn  of  this  year  he  began  coming  to 
London  oftener  and  for  longer  visits,  usually 
staying  at  my  rooms  in  Gray's  Inn;  going  to 
plays  and  music  halls,  seeing  pictures,  and  mak- 
ing numbers  of  new  acquaintances  and  friends. 
Henry  James,  W.  B.  Yeats  and  John  IMasefield 
he  knew  already;  and  he  made  friends  about  this 
time  with  Edmund  Gosse,  Walter  de  la  Mare, 
Wilfrid  Gibson,  John  Drinkwater,  W.  H.  Da- 
vies,  and  many  others. 

There  was  a  general  feeling  among  the 
younger  poets  that  modern  English  poetry  was 
very  good,  and  sadly  neglected  by  readers. 
Rupert  announced  one  evening,  sitting  half-un- 
dressed on  his  bed,  that  he  had  conceived  a  bril- 
liant scheme.  He  would  write  a  book  of  poetry, 
and  publish  it  as  a  selection  from  the  works  of 
twelve  different  writers,  six  men  and  sLx  women, 


A  MEMOIR  89 

all  with  the  most  convincing  pseudonjmis.  That, 
he  thought,  must  make  them  sit  up.  It  occurred 
to  me  that  as  we  both  believed  there  were  at  least 
twelve  flesh-and-blood  poets  whose  work,  if  prop- 
erly thrust  under  the  public's  nose,  had  a  good 
chance  of  producing  the  effect  he  desired,  it 
would  be  simpler  to  use  the  material  wliich  was 
ready  to  hand.  Next  day  (September  2()th  it 
was)  we  lunched  in  my  rooms  with  Gibson  and 
Drinkwater,  and  Harold  Monro  and  Anmdel 
del  Re  (editor  and  sub-editor  of  the  then  Poetry 
Review,  since  re-named  Poetry  and  Drama) ,  and 
started  the  plan  of  the  book  which  was  published 
in  December  under  the  name  of  Georgian  Poetry, 
1911-1912. 

This  was  our  great  excitement  for  the  rest  of 
the  year.  Rupert  went  to  stay  with  Ward  in 
Berlin  for  November,  and  kept  sending  sugges- 
tions for  promoting  the  sale  of  the  book.  (Years 
before,  a  cynical  young  friend  of  ours  at  King's 
had  told  me  that  though  'Rupert's  public  form 
was  the  youthful  poet,  the  real  foundation  of  his 
character  was  a  hard  business  faculty.')  "I  for- 
get all  my  other  ideas,"  he  wrote,  after  making 
some  very  practical  proposals,  "but  they  each 
sold  some  25  copies.  I  have  a  hazy  vision  of  in- 
credible reclame.  You  ought  to  have  an  immense 
map  of  England  {vide  'Tono-Rungay')  and  plan 


90  RUPERT  BROOKE 

campaigns  M'ith  its  aid.  And  literary  charts,  each 
district  mapped  out,  and  a  fortress  secured. 
John  Buchan  to  fill  a  page  of  the  Spectator: 
Filson  Young  in  the  P.M.G.  (we  shall  be  seven- 
teen Things  that  Matter  in  italics?),  etc.,  etc. 
You'll  be  able  to  found  a  hostel  for  poor  Geor- 
gians on  the  profits."  Some  of  his  ideas  were  too 
vast,  but  others  were  acted  on;  and  though  de- 
lays of  printing  and  binding  kept  the  book  back 
till  a  few  days  before  Christmas,  frustrating  our 
calculation  on  huge  sales  to  present-givers,  its 
success  outran  our  wildest  hopes. 

He  spent  most  of  the  spring  of  1913  in  Lon- 
don, enjoying  himself  in  many  directions.  He 
went  again  and  again  to  the  Russian  Ballet, 
which  he  loved  ("They,  if  anything  can,  redeem 
our  civilisation,"  he  had  written  in  December. 
"I'd  give  everything  to  be  a  ballet-designer") ; 
and  he  conceived  a  passion  for  the  Hippodrome 
Revue,  Hullo,  Ragtime!  which  he  saw  ten  times. 
He  had  always  been  on  occasion  a  great  fitter-in 
of  things  and  people,  and  vast  networks  of  his 
minute  arrangements  survive  on  postcards, 
though  without  the  finishing  strands  put  in  by 
telephone.  He  got  to  know  more  and  more  peo- 
ple, including  the  Asquith  family  and  George 
Wyndham,  with  whom  he  spent  a  Sunday  at 
Clouds.    He  had  no  ambition  for  the  career  of  a 


A  MEMOIR  91 

'young  man  about  town' ;  but  he  felt  he  might  let 
himself  go  for  the  moment,  as  he  would  be  start- 
ing for  America  before  he  could  get  too  much 
involved. 

He  got  his  Fellowship  on  ]March  8th.  "It's 
very  good  of  you  to  congratulate  me,"  he  wrote 
to  Geoffrey  Fry.  "You  can't  think  how  I  de- 
spise you  mere  civilians,  now.  Jetzt  bin  ich  Pro- 
fessor. A  grey  look  of  learning  has  already  set- 
tled on  my  face.  And  I  wear  spectacles."  Next 
week  he  went  to  King's  to  be  admitted,  or,  as  he 
called  it,  'churched.'  "I  dined  solemnly,"  he  told 
]Mrs.  Cornford,  "with  very  old  white-haired  men, 
at  one  end  of  a  vast  dimly-lit  hall,  and  afterwards 
drank  port  somnolently  in  the  Common  Room, 
with  the  College  silver,  and  17th  Century  por- 
traits, and  a  16th  Centurj"^  fireplace,  and  15th 
Century  ideas.    The  perfect  Don,  I  .   .    . " 

The  only  other  break  in  the  London  life  was  a 
visit  to  Rugby  towards  the  end  of  March,  when 
he  wrote  a  rapturous  spring-letter  to  ^liss  Cath- 
leen  Nesbitt.  "But  oh!  but  oh!  such  a  day! 
'Spring  came  complete  with  a  leap  in  a  day,'  said 
the  wisest  and  nicest  man  in  Warwickshire — ^^my 
godfather,^  an  aged  scholar,  infinitely  learned  in 
Greek,  Latin,  English,  and  I^ife.  He  said  it 
was  a  quotation  from  Browning.     It  certainly 

'  Mr.  Whitelaw. 


92  RUPERT  BROOKE 

fitted.  I  took  him  a  walk.  The  air  had  changed 
all  in  a  night,  and  had  that  soft  caressingness, 
and  yet  made  you  want  to  jimip  and  gambol. 
filacer,  and  not  accr,  was.  we  agreed,  the  epithet 
for  the  air.  Oh!  it's  mad  to  be  in  London  with 
the  world  like  this.  I  can't  tell  you  of  it.  The 
excitement  and  music  of  the  birds,  the  delicious 
madness  of  the  air,  the  blue  haze  in  the  distance, 
the  straining  of  the  hedges,  the  green  mist  of 
shoots  about  the  trees — oh,  it  wasn't  in  these  de- 
tails— it  was  beyond  and  round  them — something 
that  included  them.  It's  the  sort  of  day  that 
brought  back  to  me  what  I've  had  so  rarely  for 
the  last  two  years — that  tearing  hunger  to  do 
and  do  and  do  things.  I  want  to  walk  1000  miles, 
and  write  1000  plays,  and  sing  1000  poems,  and 
drink  1000  pots  of  beer,  and  kiss  1000  girls,  and 

— oh,  a  million  things! The  spring 

makes  me  almost  ill  with  excitement.  I  go  round 
corners  on  the  roads  shivering  and  nearly  crying 
with  suspense,  as  one  did  as  a  child,  fearing  some 
playmate  in  waiting  to  jump  out  and  frighten 
one." 


On  ^lay  22nd  he  started  for  New  York  on  a 
year's  travels.    "You  won't  see  me  again  till  I'm 


A  MEMOIR  93 

a  bold,  bad,  bearded  broncbo-biister  in  a  red  shirt 
and  riding-breeches,"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Sybil  Pye. 
His  plans  were  vague,  and  at  that  time  he  ex- 
pected to  be  back  by  the  end  of  1913.  He  had 
written  to  his  mother  in  February,  to  explain: 
"I  think,  now  my  physical  health  is  quite  all  right, 
I  shall  go  off  to  America  or  somewhere.  I  feel 
just  as  I  did  in  the  autimin,  that  it's  no  good 
going  on  in  England It  is  only  wast- 
ing time  to  go  on  without  doing  proper  work. 
I  think  of  going  off  to  California  or  somewhere, 
and  doing  some  kind  of  work,  or  tramping.  I 
shall  take  what  money  I  have,  and  if  they  don't 
give  me  a  fellowship,  I  can  capitalise  £200  or 
so,  and  that'll  last  me  for  as  long  as  I  want  to  be 
abroad.  I  have  no  fear  about  being  able  to  make 
a  living  now,  for  there  are  so  many  papers  that'll 
print  anything  by  me  whenever  I  like." 

"We  may  meet  again  in  this  world,"  he  wrote 
to  the  Raverats,  "I  brown  and  bearded,  you  mere 
red  round  farmers.  AVhen  that'll  be,  I  know  not. 
Perhaps  in  six  months.  Perhaps  in  six  years. 
Or  we  may  only  find  each  other  in  a  whiter  world, 
nighty-clad,  harped,  winged,  celibate. 

Shall  we  go  walks  along  the  hills  of  Heaven, 
Riicksack  on  back  and  aureole  in  pocket. 
And  stay  in  Paradisal  pubs,  and  drink 


94  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Imniort.-il  toasts  in  old  ambrosia, 

Fry   wiii^s   in   nectar  on   the  glassy  sea, 

And  build  the  fire  with  twigs  of  amaranth?" 

Here  is  his  farewell  to  England,  in  a  letter  to 
a  friend  from  the  s.s.  Cedric:  "I  arrived  solitary 
on  the  boat.  After  it  started  I  went  to  the  office, 
more  to  show  that  I  existed  than  in  the  dimmest 
hope  of  getting  anything — and  there  was  stuck 
up  a  list  called  'Unclaimed  Mail.'  (I  thought  it 
sounded  as  if  a  lot  of  the  Knights  who  had  prom- 
ised to  equip  themselves  for  the  Quest  of  the 
Holy  Grail  had  missed  the  train,  or  married  a 
wife,  or  overslept,  or  something.)  And  at  the 
top  of  the  list  '^Ir.  Rupert  Brooke.' 

" — day.  Time  is  no  more.  I  have  been  a 
million  years  on  this  boat.  I  don't  know  if  it's 
this  month  or  last  or  next.  Sometimes,  remotely, 
in  a  past  existence,  I  was  on  land.  But  this  is 
another  existence.  ...  I  have  my  joys.  Today 
I  ate  clam-chowde?'.  That's  romance,  isn't  it  ?  I 
ordered  it  quite  recklessly.  I  didn't  know  what  it 
was.  I  only  knew  that  anything  called  clam- 
chowder  must  be  strange  beyond  words. 

If  you  were  like  clam-chowder 

And  I  were  like  the  sj)oon. 
And  the  band  were  playing  louder 

And  a  little  more  in  tune. 


A  MEMOIR  95 

I'd  stir  you  till  I  spilled  you. 
Or  kiss  you  till  I  killed  you, 
If  you  were  like  clam-chowder 
And  I  were  like  the  spoon. 

(But  you  don't  know  Swinburne.)     'Clam-chow- 
der,' my  God!  what  am  I  coming  to?  .   .   . 

"I  haven't  told  you  much  about  my  voyage, 
have  I?  There's  not  much  to  tell.  I  felt,  before 
I  got  your  letter,  a  trifle  lonely  at  Liverpool. 
Everybody  else  seemed  to  have  people  to  see 
them  off.  So  I  went  back  on  shore  and  found  a 
dirty  little  boy,  who  was  unoccupied,  and  said 
his  name  was  William.  'Will  you  wave  to  me  if 
I  give  you  sixpence,  William?'  I  said.  'Why 
yes,'  said  William.  So  I  gave  him  sixpence,  and 
went  back  on  board.  And  when  the  time  came  he 
leaned  over  his  railing  on  the  landing-stage,  and 
waved.  And  now  and  then  he  shouted  indistinct 
messages  in  a  shrill  voice.  And  as  we  slid  away, 
the  last  object  I  looked  at  was  a  small  dot  waving 
a  white  handkerchief,  or  nearly  white,  faithfully. 
So  I  got  my  sixpenn'orth  and  my  farewell — Dear 
William!" 

For  his  travels  in  America  and  Canada,  his 
letters  to  the  Wcstmuiatcr  Gazette,  since  repub- 
lished, must  be  allowed  in  the  main  to  speak;  but 
these  may  be  supplemented  by  scraps  of  his  let- 


96  RUPERT  BROOKE 

ters  to  his  mother  and  his  friends.  "America 
luisn't  changed  me  much  yet,"  he  wrote  from 
New  York.  "I've  got  the  adorablest  httle  touch 
of  an  American  accent,  and  I'm  a  bit  thiimer." 
lie  wasn't  very  happy  at  first.  "When  I'm 
alone,"  he  wrote  to  me  on  June  29th  from  the 
^Montreal  Express,  "I  sink  into  a  kind  of  mental 
stupor  \\hich  may  last  for  months.  I  shan't  be 
really  right  till  I  get  back  to  you  all."  And  again 
from  Ottawa,  ten  days  later,  "I  don't  get  very 
miserable,  or  go  to  pieces  (save  for  occasional 
bursts  of  home-sickness  just  before  meals)  ;  but 
my  whole  level  of  life  descends  to  an  incredible 
muddy  flatness.  I  do  no  reading,  no  thinking, 
no  writing.  And  very  often  I  don't  see  many 
things.  The  real  hell  of  it  is  that  I  get  so  numb 
that  my  brain  and  senses  don't  record  fine  or  clear 
impressions.  So  the  time  is  nearly  all  waste. 
I'm  very  much  ashamed  of  it  all.  For  I've  always 
beforehand  a  picture  of  myself  dancing  through 
foreign  cities,  drinking  in  novelty,  hurling  off  let- 
ters to  the  W.G.J  breaking  into  song  and  son- 
net, dashing  off  plays  and  novels.   .    .    .  Lord, 

Lord! 

"American  'hospitality'  means  that  with  the 
nice  ones  you  can  be  at  once  on  happy  and  inti- 
mate terms.  Oh  dear,  the  tears  quite  literally 
well  up  into  my  eyes  when  I  think  of  a  group 


A  MEMOIR  97 

of  young  Harvard  people  I  tumbled  into — at 
Harvard.  They  had  the  charm  and  freshness 
and  capacity  for  instantly  creating  a  relation  of 
happy  and  warm  friendliness  that,  for  instance, 

Denis  ^  has.    It's  a  nice  thing 

"You,  at  home,  have  no  conception  how  you're 
all  getting  a  sanctity  and  halo  about  you  in  my 
mind.  I  dwell  so  much  and  so  sentimentally  on 
all  the  dear  dead  days  that  I  am  beginning  to  see 
no  faults  and  all  \irtues  in  all  of  you.  You,  my 
dear,  appear  perfection  in  every  part.  Your 
passion  for  anagrams  is  a  lovable  and  deeply 
intellectual  taste.  Your  acquaintance  with  [a 
bete  noire  of  his]  a  beautiful  thing.  Your  lack 
of  sympathy  with  the  Labour  Party  turns  to  a 
noble  and  picturesque  Toryism.  Even  your 
preference  for  gilded  over  comfortable  chairs 
loses  something  of  its  ugliness  in  my  heart.     Of 

you  and  Norton  and  Duncan  and and  even 

I  think  incessantlj",  devotedly,  and  tearfully. 

Even  of  figures  who,  to  be  frank,  have  hovered 
but  dimly  on  the  outskirts  of  my  consciousness, 
I    am    continually    and    fragrantly    memorial. 

I  make  up  little  minor,  pitiful  songs, 

the  burden  of  which  is  that  I  have  a  folk-longing 
to  get  back  from  all  this  Imperial  luxury  to  the 
simplicity  of  the  little  places  and  quiet  folks  I 

*  Denis  Browne,  of  whom  more  hereafter. 


98  RUPERT  BROOKE 

knew  and  loved.    One  very  beautiful  one  has  the 
chorus — 

Would  God  I  were  eating  plover's  eggs. 

And  drinking  dry  champagne, 
With  the  Bernard  Shaws,   Mr.  and  Mrs.   Masefield,  Lady 
Horner,  Neil   Primrose,  Raleigh,  the  Right  Honourable 
Augustine    Birrell,    Eddie,   si.\    or    seven    Asquiths,    md 
Felicity  Tree, 

In  Downing  Street  again." 

His  next  letter  was  from  Toronto,  a  fortnight 
later:  "I've  found  here  an  Arts  and  Letters  Club 
of  poets,  painters,  journalists,  etc.,  where  they'd 
heard  of  me,  and  read  G.  P./  and,  oh  Eddie,  one 
fellow  actually  possessed  my  'Poems.'  Awful 
Triumph.  Every  now  and  then  one  comes  up 
and  presses  my  hand  and  says,  'Wal  Sir,  you 
cannot  know  what  a  memorable  Day  in  my  life 
this  is.'  Then  I  do  my  pet  boyish-modesty  stunt 
and  go  pink  all  over;  and  everyone  thinks  it  too 
delightful.  One  man  said  to  me,  '^Nlr.  Brooks' 
(my  Canadian  name),  'Sir,  I  may  tell  you  that 
in  my  opinion  you  have  Mr.  Noyes  skinned.' 
That  means  I'm  better  than  him :  a  great  compli- 
ment. But  they're  really  quite  an  up-to-date 
lot;  and  very  cheery  and  pleasant.  I  go  to- 
morrow to  the  desert  and  the  wilds." 

^Oeorgian  Poetry. 


A  MEMOIR  99 

The  desert  and  the  wilds  suited  him  much 
better  than  the  cities.  "Today,"  he  wrote  to 
Miss  Xesbit  on  the  3rd  of  August  from  Lake 
George,  about  70  miles  from  Winnipeg,  "I'm 
26  years  old — and  I've  done  so  little.  I'm  very 
much  ashamed.  By  God,  I  am  going  to  make 
things  hum  though — but  that's  all  so  far  away. 
I'm  lying  quite  naked  on  a  beach  of  golden  sand, 
6  miles  away  from  the  hunting-lodge,  the  other 
man  near  by,  a  gun  between  us  in  case  bears  ap- 
pear, the  boat  pulled  up  on  the  shore,  the  lake 
very  blue  and  ripply,  and  the  sun  rather  strong. 

We  caught  two  pike  on  the  way  out, 

which  lie  picturesquely  in  the  bows  of  the  boat. 
Along  the  red-gold  beach  are  the  tracks  of  vari- 
ous wild  animals,  mostly  jumping-deer  and  cari- 
bou. One  red-deer  we  saw  as  we  came  round 
the  corner,  lolloping  along  the  beach,  stopping 
and  snuffling  the  wind,  and  then  going  on  again. 
Very  lovely.  We  were  up-wind  and  it  didn't 
see  us,  and  the  meat  wasn't  needed,  so  we  didn't 
shoot  at  it  (I'm  glad,  I'm  no  'sportsman') .  We 
bathed  off  the  beach,  and  then  lit  a  fire  of  birch 
and  spruce,  and  fried  eggs,  and  ate  cold  caribou- 
heart,  and  made  tea,  and  had,  oh !  blueberry  pie. 
Cooking  and  eating  a  meal  naked  is  the  most 
solemnly  primitive  thing  one  can  do;  and — tliis 
is  the  one  thing  which  will  make  you  realise  that 


100  RUPERT  BROOKE 

I'm  living  far  the  most  wonderfully  and  incred- 
ibly romantic  life  you  ever  heard  of,  and  infin- 
itely superior  to  your  miserable  crawling  London 
existence — the  place  we  landed  at  is  an  Indian 
Camp.  At  any  moment  a  flotilla  of  birchbark 
canoes  may  sweep  round  the  corner,  crowded 
with  Indians,  braves  and  squaws  and  papooses — 
and  not  those  lonely  half-breeds  and  stray 
Indians  that  speak  English,  mind  you,  but  the 
Real  Thing!     Shades  of  Fenimore  Cooper  1" 

But  he  was  quite  able  to  cope  with  civilisation 
when  he  got  back  to  it.  The  next  letter  is  ten 
days  later,  from  Edmonton:  "I  find  I'm  becom- 
ing very  thick-skinned  and  bold,  and  the  com- 
plete journalist.  I've  just  been  interviewed  by 
a  reporter.  I  fairly  crushed  him.  I  just  put 
my  cigar  in  the  corner  of  my  mouth,  and  undid 
my  coat-buttons,  and  put  my  thumbs  under  my 
armpits,  and  spat,  and  said,  'Say,  Kid,  this  is 
some  town.'  He  asked  me  a  lot  of  questions  to 
which  I  didn't  know  the  answers,  so  I 
lied 

"Also  I  am  become  very  good  at  bearding  peo- 
ple. I  just  enter  railway  offices  and  demand 
free  passes  as  a  journalist,  and  stamp  into  im- 
mense newspaper  buildings  and  say  I  want  to 
talk  for  an  hour  to  the  Chief  Editor,  and  I  can 
lean  across  the  counter  with  a  cigarette  and  dis- 


A  MEMOIR  101 

cuss  the  Heart  witli  the  young  lady  who  sells 
cigars,  newspapers,  and  stamps.  I  believe  I 
could  do  a  deal  in  Real  Estate,  in  the  bar,  over 
a  John  Collins,  with  a  clean-shaven  Yankee  with 
a  tremulous  eyelid  and  a  moist  lower  lip.  In 
fact,  I  am  a  Man." 

He  stayed  some  days  at  Vancouver,  where  he 
wrote  his  mother  a  letter  which  gives  me  occasion 
to  stand  in  a  very  white  sheet.  "I'm  glad  you 
like  the  Westminster  articles.  They're  not 
always  very  well  written,  but  I  think  they're 
the  sort  of  stuff  that  ought  to  interest  an  intelli- 
gent W.G.  reader  more  than  the  ordinary  travel 
stuff  one  sees.  I  hope  they  won't  annoy  people 
over  this  side.  Canadians  and  Americans  are 
so  touchy.  But  it's  absurd  to  ladle  out  indis- 
criminate praise,  as  most  people  do.  I  heard 
from  Eddie  about  the  proofs.  I  was  very  sad 
at  one  thing.  In  my  first  or  second  article  I  had 
made  an  American  say  'You  bet  your' — which  is 
good  American  slang.  Eddie  thought  a  word 
was  left  out  and  inserted  'boots/  I  only  hope 
the  W.G.  omitted  it.  I  suppose  it'll  be  printed 
by  now.  If  not,  'i)hone  the  W.G.  or  write — 
But  it  must  be  too  late.     Alas!     Alas  I 

"Vancouver  is  a  queer  place,  rather  different 
from  the  rest  of  Canada.  i\lore  oriental.  The 
country  and  harbour  arc  rather  beautiful,  with 


102  RUPERT  BROOKE 

great  violet  mountains  all  round,  snow-peaks  in 
the  distance.  They  interviewed  me  and  put  (as 
usual)  a  quite  inaccurate  report  of  it  in  the 
paper,  saying  I'd  come  here  to  investigate  the 
Japanese  question.  In  consequence  about  five 
people  rang  me  up  every  morning  at  8  o'clock 
(British  Columbians  get  up  an  hour  earlier  than 
I)  to  say  they  wanted  to  wait  on  me  and  give  me 
their  views.  Out  here  they  always  have  tele- 
phones in  the  bedrooms.  One  old  sea-captain 
came  miles  to  tell  me  that  the  Japanese — and 
every  other — trouble  was  due  to  the  fact  that 
British  Columbia  had  neglected  the  teaching  of 
the  Gospels  on  the  land  question.  He  wasn't 
so  far  out  in  some  respects." 

He  sailed  for  Hawaii  from  San  Francisco, 
where  he  was  warmly  welcomed  at  Berkeley  Uni- 
versity by  Professor  Gayly  and  Professor  Wells, 
and  made  many  friends  among  the  undergradu- 
ates. "California,"  he  wrote  to  me  on  the  1st 
of  October,  "is  nice,  and  the  Californians  a 
friendly  bunch.  There's  a  sort  of  goldenness 
about  'Frisco  and  the  neighbourhood.  It  hangs 
in  the  air,  and  about  the  people.  Everyone  is 
very  cheery  and  cordial  and  simple.  They  are 
rather  a  nation  apart,  different  from  the  rest  of 
the  States.  JNluch  more  like  the  English.  As 
everywhere  in  this  extraordinary  country,  I  am 


A  MEMOIR  103 

welcomed  with  open  arms  when  I  say  I  know 
Masefield  and  Goldie!^  It's  very  queer.  I 
can't  for  tlie  life  of  me  help  moving  about  like  a 
metropolitan  among  rustics,  or  an  Athenian  in 
Thrace.  Their  wide-mouthed  awe  at  England 
is  so  touching — they  really  are  a  colony  of  ours 
still.  That  they  should  be  speaking  to  a  man 
who  knows  Lowes  Dickinson,  has  met  Gals- 
worthy, who  once  saw  Belloc  plain!  .  .  .  What 
should  we  feel  if  we  could  speak  with  an  Jmbitue 
of  the  theatre  at  Athens,  Fifth  Century,  or  with 
^line  Host  of  the  ]\Iermaid?  All  that  they  have 
with  me,  the  dears!  Yet  I  don't  know  why  I 
write  this  from  California,  the  one  place  that 
has  a  literature  and  tradition  of  its  own. 

"On  Tuesday — the  Pacific.  I'll  write  thence, 
but  God  knows  when  it'll  get  to  you." 

He  wrote  no  letters  to  the  Westminster  from 
the  South  Seas,  chiefly  because  the  life  there  was 
too  absorbing,  but  partly  perhaps  from  doubt 
whether  they  would  be  used.  He  had  got  a  let- 
ter from  which  he  inferred,  wrongly,  that  only 
one  series  of  six  letters  was  wanted  from  him. 
"Isn't  it  beastly?"  he  wrote.  "I  supposed  I  was 
going  on  once  a  week  for  months  and  years.  I 
could  read  me  once  a  week  for  ever,  couldn't 
you  ?"     But  there  are  plenty  of  letters  to  friends, 

*  G.  Lowes  DickiDSon. 


104  RUPERT  BROOKE 

"The  Pacific,"  he  wrote  from  the  steamer  on  Oc- 
tober 12th,  "has  been  very  pacific,  God  be 
thanked — so  I've  had  a  pleasant  voyage.  Three 
passionate  Pacific  women  cast  lustrous  eyes  to- 
wards me,  but,  with  a  dim  remembrance  of  the 
fate  of  Conrad  characters  who  succumbed  to 
such  advances,  I  evade  them.  I  pass  my  hand 
wearily  through  my  long  hair,  and  say,  'Is  not 
the  soul  of  JVIaurya  a  glimmering  wing  in  the 
moth-hour?'  or  words  to  that  effect.  The  Celtic 
method  is  not  understood  in  this  part  of  the 
world." 

The  first  stop  was  at  Honolulu,  where  he 
stayed  on  Waikiki  beach,  the  scene  of  the  sonnet 
beginning  "Warm  perfumes  like  a  breath  from 
vine  and  tree."  He  wrote  to  his  mother  with- 
out enthusiasm:  "Honolulu  itself  is  a  dread- 
fully American  place,  just  like  any  city  in  the 
States  or  Canada";  and  he  found  little  better  to 
say  of  the  country  round  about  than  that  "it 
really  is  tropical  in  character,  like  some  of  the 
gardens  and  places  at  Cannes,  on  an  immense 
scale." 

But  this  is  what  he  wrote  to  me  about  Samoa 
from  the  steamer  taking  him  to  Fiji:  "It's  all 
true  about  the  South  Seas!  I  get  a  little  tired  of 
it  at  moments,  because  I  am  just  too  old  for  Ro- 
mance.   But  there  it  is;  there  it  wonderfully  is; 


A  MEMOIR  105 

heaven  on  earth,  the  ideal  life,  little  work,  danc- 
ing and  singing  and  eating;  naked  people  of  in- 
credible loveliness,  perfect  manners,  and  immense 
kindliness,  a  divine  tropic  climate,  and  intoxica- 
ting beauty  of  scenery.  I  wandered  with  an  'in- 
terpreter'— entirely  genial  and  quite  incapable  of 
English — through  Samoan  villages.  The  last 
few  days  I  stopped  in  one,  where  a  big  marriage 
feast  was  going  on.  I  lived  in  a  Samoan  house 
(the  coolest  in  the  world)  with  a  man  and  his 
wife,  nine  children  ranging  from  a  proud  beauty 
of  18  to  a  round  object  of  1  year,  a  dog,  a  cat,  a 
proud  hysterical  hen,  and  a  gaudy  scarlet  and 
green  parrot  who  roved  the  roof  and  beams  with  a 

wicked  eye,  choosing  a  place  whence  to 

twice  a  day,  with  humorous  precision,  on  my  hat 
and  clothes. 

"The  Samoan  girls  have  extraordinarily  beau- 
tiful bodies,  and  walk  like  goddesses.  They're 
a  lovely  brown  colour,  without  any  black  Melane- 
sian  admixture.  Can't  you  imagine  how  shat- 
tered and  fragmentary  a  heart  I'm  bearing  away 
to  Fiji  and  Tahiti?  And,  oh  dear  I  I'm  afraid 
they'll  be  just  as  bad. 

"And  it's  all  true  about,  for  instance,  cocoa- 
nuts.  You  tramp  through  a  strange,  vast,  drip- 
ping, tropical  forest  for  hours,  listening  to  weird 
liquid  hootings  from  birds  and  demons  in  the 


lOG  RUPERT  BROOKE 

brandies  above.  Then  you  feel  thirsty.  So  you 
send  your  boy  up  a  great  perpendicular  palm. 
lie  runs  up  with  utter  ease  and  grace,  cuts  off  a 
couple  of  vast  nuts,  and  comes  down  and  makes 
holes  in  them.  And  they're  chock-full  of  the 
best  drink  in  the  world.  Romance!  Romance! 
I  walked  15  miles  through  mud  and  up  and  down 
mountains,  and  swam  three  rivers,  to  get  this 
boat.  But  if  ever  you  miss  me,  suddenly,  one 
day,  from  lecture-room  B  in  King's,  or  from 
the  INIoulin  d'Or  at  lunch,  you'll  know  that  I've 
got  sick  for  the  full  moon  on  these  little  thatched 
roofs,  and  the  pahns  against  the  morning,  and 
the  Samoan  boys  and  girls  diving  thirty  feet  into 
a  green  sea  or  a  deep  mountain  pool  under  a 
waterfall — and  that  I've  gone  back." 

The  next  place  was  Fiji,  where  he  wrote  to 
Edmund  Gosse  from  Suva  on  November  19th. 
"I've  just  got  into  this  place,  from  Samoa.  I 
said  to  myself,  'Fiji  is  obviously  the  wildest  place 
I  can  get  to  round  here.  The  name,  and  pictures 
of  the  inhabitants,  prove  it.'  And  lo!  a  large 
English  town,  with  two  banks,  several  churches, 
dental  surgeons,  a  large  gaol,  auctioneers,  book- 
makers, two  newspapers,  and  all  the  other  appur- 
tenances of  civilisation!  But  I  fancy  I'll  be  able 
to  get  some  little  boat  and  go  off  to  some  smaller 
wilder  islands 


A  MEMOIR  107 

"Perplexing  country!  At  home  everything  is 
so  simple,  and  choice  is  swift,  for  the  sensible 
man.  There  is  only  the  choice  between  writing  a 
good  sonnet  and  making  a  million  pounds.  Who 
could  hesitate?  But  here  the  choice  is  between 
writing  a  sonnet,  and  climbing  a  straight  hun- 
dred-foot cocoanut  pahii,  or  diving  forty  feet 
from  a  rock  into  pellucid  blue-green  water. 
Which  is  the  better,  there?  One's  European 
literary  soul  begins  to  be  haunted  by  strange 
doubts  and  shaken  with  fundamental,  fan- 
tastic misgivings.  I  think  I  shall  return 
home 

"Oh,  it's  horribly  true,  what  you  WTote,  that 
one  only  finds  in  the  South  Seas  what  one  brings 
there.  Perhaps  I  could  have  found  Romance  if 
I'd  brought  it.  Yet  I  do  not  think  one  could 
help  but  find  less  trouble  than  one  brings.  The 
idea  of  the  South  Seas  as  a  place  of  passion  and 
a  INIohammedan's  paradise  is  but  a  sailor's  yarn. 
It  is  nothing  near  so  disturbing.  It's  rather  the 
opposite  of  alcohol  according  to  the  Porter's  defi- 
nition: for  it  promotes  performance  but  takes 
away  desire.  Yet  I  can  understand  Stevenson 
finding — as  you  put  it — the  Shorter  Catechism 
there.  One  keeps  realising,  however  unwill- 
ingly, responsibility.  I  noticed  in  myself,  and 
in  the  other  white  people  in  Samoa,  a  trait  that 


108  RUPERT  BROOKE 

I  have  remarked  in  Schoolmasters.  You  know 
that  sort  of  slightly  irritated  tolerance,  and  lack 
of  irresponsibility,  that  mark  the  pedagogue? 
One  feels  that  one's  a  White  JNIan  {vide  Kipling 
passim) — ludicrously.  I  kept  thinking  I  was  in 
the  Sixth  at  Rugby  again.  These  dear  good 
people,  with  their  laughter  and  friendliness  and 
crowns  of  flowers — one  feels  that  one  must  pro- 
tect them.  If  one  was  having  an  evening  out 
with  FalstafF  and  Bardolph  themselves,  and  a 
small  delightful  child  came  up  with  'Please  I'm 
lost  and  I  want  to  get  home,'  wouldn't  one  have 
to  leave  good  fellowship  and  spend  the  evening 
in  mean  streets  tracking  its  abode?  That's,  I 
fancy,  how  the  white  man  feels  in  these  forgotten 
— and  dissolving — pieces  of  heaven.  And  that 
perhaps  is  what  Stevenson  felt — I  don't  know 
enough  about  him.  His  memory  is  sweet  there, 
in  Samoa:  especially  among  the  natives.  The 
white  men,  mostly  traders,  who  remain  from  his 
time,  have — for  such  people — very  warm  recol- 
lections of  his  personality:  but — with  a  touch 
of  pathos — avow  themselves  unable  to  see  any 
merit  in  his  work.  Such  stuff  as  the  Wrong 
Box  they  frankly  can't  understand  a  gi*own  man 
writing  ...  I  went  up  the  steep  hill  above 
Vailima,  where  the  grave  is.  It's  a  high  and 
lonely  spot.     I  took  a  Samoan  of  about  20  to 


A  MEMOIR  109 

guide  me.  He  was  much  impressed  by  Steven- 
son's fame.  'That  fellow,'  he  said,  'I  think  every 
fellow  in  world  know  him.'  Then  he  looked 
perplexed.  'But  my  father  say,'  he  went  on, 
'Stevenson  no  big  man — small  man.'  That  a 
slight  man  of  medium  height  should  be  so  famous, 
puzzled  him  altogether.    If  he  had  been  seven  feet 

high,  now!    Fame  is  a  curious  thing 

Oh,  do  forgive  the  envelope.  INIy  own,  in  this 
awful  climate,  are  all  fast  stuck,  though  never 
filled,  like  an  English  churchman's  mind.  And 
I'm  reduced  to  these  fantastic  affairs." 

Other  letters  add  touches  to  his  picture.  To 
me  he  wrote:  "Suva  is  a  queer  place;  much 
civilised ;  full  of  English  people  who  observe  the 
Rules  of  Etiquette,  and  call  on  third  Thursdays, 
and  do  not  speak  to  the  'natives.'  Fiji's  not  so 
attractive  as  Samoa,  but  more  macabre.  Across 
the  bay  are  ranges  of  inky,  sinister  mountains, 
over  which  there  are  always  clouds  and  darkness. 
No  matter  how  fine  or  windy  or  hot  or  cheerful 
it  may  be  in  Suva,  that  trans-sinutic  region  is 
nothing  but  forbidding  and  terrible.  The  Greeks 
would  have  made  it  the  entrance  of  the  other 
world — it  is  just  what  I've  always  imagined 
Avernus  to  be  like.  I'm  irresistibly  attracted  by 
them,  and  when  I  come  back  from  my  cruise,  I 
intend  to  walk  among  them.     Shall  I  return? 


110  RUPERT  BROOKE 

If  not,  spill  some  blood  in  a  trench — you'll  find 
the  recipe  in  Iloiner — and  my  wandering  shade 

will  come  for  an  hour  or  two  to  la^)  it 

The  sunsets  here !  the  colour  of  the  water  over  the 
reef!  the  gloom  and  terror  of  those  twisted  moun- 
tains! and  the  extraordinary  contrasts  in  the 
streets  and  the  near  country — for  there  are  fifty 
thousand  Hindoos,  indentured  labour,  here, 
emaciated  and  proud,  in  I^iberty-coloured  gar- 
ments, mournful,  standing  out  among  these  gay, 
pathetic,  sturdy  children  the  Fijians.  The  Hin- 
doos, who  were  civilised  when  we  were  Fijians; 
and  the  Fijians,  who  will  never  be  civilised.  And 
amongst  them,  weedy  Australian  clerks,  uncer- 
tain whether  they  most  despise  a  'haw-haw  Eng- 
lishman' or  a  'dam  nigger,'  and  without  the  con- 
science of  the  one  or  the  charm  of  the  other; 
secret  devil-worshippers,  admirers  of  xlmerica, 
English  without  tradition  and  Yankees  without 
go.  Give  me  a  landed  gentry,  ten  shillings  on 
wheat,  and  hanging  for  sheep-stealing;  also  the 
Established  Church,  whence  I  spring." 

To  Denis  Browne  he  wrote  about  the  dancing 
and  the  music:  *'I  prefer  watching  a  Siva-Siva 
to  observing  Xijinsky.  Oh  dear,  I  so  wish  you'd 
been  with  jne  for  some  of  these  native  dances. 
I've  got  no  ear,  and  can't  get  the  tunes  down. 
They're  very  simple — just  a  few  bars  with  a  scale 


A  MEMOIR  111 

of  about  5  notes,  repeated  over  and  over  again. 
But  it's  the  Rlujtlim  that  gets  you.  They  get 
extraordinarily  rhythmic  effects,  everybody  beat- 
ing their  hands,  or  tapping  with  a  stick;  and  the 
dancers  swaying  their  bodies  and  tapping  with 
their  feet.  None  of  that  damned  bounding  and 
pirouetting.  Just  sti/Us^ierfc  pantomime,  some- 
times slightly  indecent.  But  most  exciting. 
Next  time  I  get  sick  of  England,  I'm  going  to 
bring  you  along  out  here,  and  work  the  whole 
thing  out. 

"You  won't  know  me  when — if  ever — I  return. 
]Many  things  I  have  lost;  my  knowledge  of  art 
and  literature,  my  fragmentary  manners,  my 
acquaintance  with  the  English  tongue,  and  any 
slight  intelligence  I  ever  had;  but  I  have  gained 
other  things;  a  rich  red-brown  for  my  skin,  a 
knowledge  of  mixed  drinks,  an  ability  to  talk  or 
drink  with  any  kind  of  man,  and  a  large  reper- 
toire of  dirty  stories.  Am  I  richer  or  poorer? 
I  don't  know.  I  only  regret  that  I  shall  never 
be  able  to  mix  in  your  or  any  intelligent  circles 
again.  I  am  indistinguishable  (except  by  my 
poverty)  from  a  Hall  man." 

"Dear  Miss  Asquith,"  ^  he  WTote  in  mid-De- 
cember from  'somewhere  in  the  mountains  of 
Fiji.'     "Forgive  this  paper.     Its  limpness  is  be- 

*  Miss  Violet  Asquith,  now  Lady  Bonham-Carter. 


112  RUPERT  BROOKE 

cause  it  has  been  in  terrific  thunderstorms,  and 
through  most  of  the  rivers  in  Fiji,  in  the  List  few 
days.  Its  marks  of  dirt  are  because  small  naked 
brown  babies  tinll  crawl  up  and  handle  it.  And 
any  bloodstains  ilHI  he  mine.  The  point  is,  will 
they  .  .  .  ?  It's  absurd,  I  know.  It's  twenty 
years  since  they've  eaten  anybody,  and  far  more 
since  they've  done  what  I  particularly  and  un- 
reasonably detest — fastened  the  victim  down, 
cut  pieces  off  him  one  by  one,  and  cooked  and 
eaten  them  before  his  eyes.  To  witness  one's 
own  transubstantiation  into  a  naked  black  man, 
that  seems  the  last  indignity.  Consideration  of 
the  thoughts  that  pour  through  the  mind  of  the 
ever-diminishing  remnant  of  a  man,  as  it  sees  its 
late  limbs  cooking,  moves  me  deeply.  I  have 
been  meditating  a  sonnet,  as  I  sit  here,  sur- 
rounded by  dusky  faces  and  gleaming  eyes: — 

Dear,  they  have  poached  the  eyes  you  loved  so  well — 

It'd  do  well  for  No.  101  and  last,  in  a  modern 
sonnet-sequence,  wouldn't  it?  I  don't  know  how 
it  would  go  on.  The  fourth  line  would  have  to 
be 

And  all  my  turbulent  lips  are  mattre-d'hotel — 

I  don't  know  how  to  scan  French.  I  fancy  that 
limps.  But  'all'  is  very  strong  in  the  modern 
style. 


A  MEMOIR  113 

"The  idea  comes  out  in  a  slighter  thing: — 

The  limbs  that  erstwhile  charmed  your  sight 

Are  now  a  savaj^e's   delight; 

The  ear  that  heard  your  whispered  vow 

Is  one  of  many  entrees  now; 

Broiled  are  the  arms  in  which  you  clung. 

And  devilled  is  the  angelic  tongue:  .  .  . 

And  oh !  my  anguish  as  I  see 

A  Black  Man  gnaw  your  favourite  knee! 

Of  the  two  eyes  that  were  your  ruin. 

One  now  observes  the  other  stewing. 

My  lips   (the  inconstancy  of  man!) 

Are  yours  no  more.     The  legs  that  ran 

Each  dewy  morn  their  love  to  wake. 

Are  now  a  steak,  are  now  a  steak !  .  .  . 

Oh,  dear!  I  suppose  it  ought  to  end  on  the 
Higher  Note,  the  Wider  Outlook.  Poetry  has 
to,  they  tell  me.  You  may  caress  details,  all  the 
main  parts  of  the  poem,  but  at  last  you  have  to 
open  the  window  and  turn  to  God,  or  Earth,  or 
Eternity,  or  any  of  the  Grand  Old  Endings.  It 
gives  Uplift,  as  we  Americans  say.  And  that's 
so  essential.  (Did  you  ever  notice  how  the 
Browning  family's  poems  all  refer  suddenly  to 
God  in  the  last  line?  It's  laughable  if  you  read 
through  them  in  that  way.  'What  if  that  friend 
happened  to  be — God?'  'What  comes  next? 
Is  it— God?'  'And  with  God  be  the  rest.' 
'And  if  God  choose,  I  shall  but  love  thee  better 


lU  RUPERT  BROOKE 

after  death.'  .  .  .  etc.,  etc.     I  forget  them  all 
now.     It  shows  what  the  Victorians  were.) 
"So  must  I  soar: — 

O  love,  O  loveliest  and  best, 

Natives  this  body  may  digest; 

Whole,  and  still  yours,  my  soul  shall  dwell. 

Uneaten,  safe,  incoctible  ... 

It's  too  dull.  I  shall  go  out  and  wander  through 
the  forest  paths  by  the  grey  moonlight.  Fiji  in 
moonlight  is  like  nothing  else  in  this  world  or 
the  next.  It's  all  dim  colours  and  all  scents. 
And  here,  where  it's  high  up,  the  most  fantas- 
tically-shaped mountains  in  the  world  tower  up 
all  around,  and  little  silver  clouds  and  wisps  of 
mist  run  bleating  up  and  down  the  valleys  and 
hillsides  like  lambs  looking  for  their  mother. 
There's  only  one  thing  on  earth  as  beautiful ;  and 
that's  Samoa  by  moonlight.  That's  utterly  dif- 
ferent, merely  Heaven,  sheer  loveliness.  You 
lie  on  a  mat  in  a  cool  Samoan  hut,  and  look  out 
on  the  white  sand  under  the  high  palms,  and  a 
gentle  sea,  and  the  black  line  of  the  reef  a  mile 
out,  and  moonlight  over  everj'ihing,  floods  and 
floods  of  it,  not  sticky,  like  Honolulu  moonlight, 
not  to  be  eaten  with  a  spoon,  but  flat  and  abun- 
dant, such  that  you  could  slice  thin  golden-white 
shavings  off  it,  as  off  cheese.    And  then  among 


A  MEMOIR  115 

it  all  are  the  loveliest  people  in  the  world,  mov- 
ing and  dancing  like  gods  and  goddesses,  very 
quietly  and  mysteriously,  and  utterly  content. 
It  is  sheer  beauty,  so  pure  that  it's  difficult  to 
breathe  in  it — like  living  in  a  Keats  world,  only 
it's  less  syrupy — Endymion  without  sugar. 
Completely  unconnected  with  this  world. 
"There  is  a  poem: 

I  know  an  Island 

Where  the  long  scented  holy  nights  pass  slow. 

And  there,  'twixt  lowland  and  highland, 

The  white  stream  falls  into  a  pool  I  know. 

Deep,  hidden  with  ferns  and  flowers,  soft  as  dreaming. 

Where  the  brown  laughing  dancing  bathers  go  .  .  . 

It  ends  after  many  pages: 

I  know  an  Island 

Where  the  slow  fragrant-breathing  nights  creep  past; 
And  there,  'twixt  lowland  and  highland, 
A  deep,  fern-shrouded,  murmurous  water  glimmers; 
There  I'll  come  back  at  last, 

And  find  my  friends,  the  flower-crowned,  laughing  swim- 
mers. 
And— ^ 

I  forget.  And  I've  not  written  the  middle  part 
And  it's  very  bad,  like  all  true  poems.  I  love 
England;  and  all  the  people  in  it;  but  oh,  how 

'  Those   lines    appear   npain,   considerablj'   altered,   in   the   essay 
called  Some  Nigyera,  printed  in  Letters  from  America. 


116  RUPERT  BROOKE 

can  one  know  of  heaven  on  earth  and  not  come 
back  to  it?  I'm  afraid  I  shall  sli])  away  from  that 
slithery,  murky  place  you're  (1  suppose)  in  now, 
and  return —     Ridiculous. 

"I  continue  in  a  hot  noon,  under  an  orange 
tree.  We  rose  at  dawn  and  walked  many  miles 
and  swam  seven  large  rivers  and  picked  and  ate 
many  oranges  and  pineapples  and  drank  cocoa- 
nuts.  Now  the  two  'boys'  who  carry  my  luggage 
are  asleep  in  the  shade.  They're  Fijians  of 
twenty-three  or  so  who  know  a  few  words  of 
English.  One  of  them  is  the  finest-made  man 
I've  ever  seen;  like  a  Greek  statue  come  to  life; 
strong  as  ten  horses.  To  see  him  strip  and  swim 
a  half-flooded  river  is  an  immortal  sight. 

"Last  night  we  stayed  in  the  house  of  a  moun- 
tain chief  who  has  spasmodic  yearnings  after 
civilisation.  When  these  grow  strong,  he  sends 
a  runner  down  to  the  coast  to  buy  any  illustrated 
papers  he  can  find.  lie  knows  no  English,  but 
he  pastes  his  favourite  pictures  up  round  the  wall 
and  muses  over  them.  I  lectured  on  them — 
fragments  of  the  Sketch  and  Sphere  for  several 
years — to  a  half-naked  reverent  audience  last 
night  (through  my  interpreter  of  course).  The 
Prince  of  Wales,  looking  like  an  Oxford  under- 
graduate, elbows  two  ladies  who  display  1911 
spring-fashions.     A   golf  champion   in   a  most 


A  MEMOIR  117 

contorted  position  occupies  a  central  place.  He 
is  regarded,  I  fancy,  as  a  rather  potent  and  vio- 
lent deity.  To  his  left  is  'Miss  Viola  Tree,  as 
Eurydice,'  to  his  right  Miss  IJllah  ^M'Carthy  as 
Jocasta,  looking  infinitely  ISIycenaean.  I  ex- 
plained about  incest,  shortly,  and  ]Miss  ]M'C.  rose 
tremendously  in  Fijian  estimation.  W]w  do 
people  like  their  gods  to  be  so  eccentric,  always? 
I  fancy  I  left  an  impression  that  she  was  Mr. 
H.  PI.  Hilton's  (is  that  right?  You're  a  golfer) 
mother  and  wife.  It  is  so  hard  to  explain  our 
civilisation  to  simple  people.  Anyhow,  I  dis- 
turbed their  theology  and  elevated  Lillah  to  the 
top  place.  How  Eurj'dice  came  in  puzzled  them 
and  me.  I  fancy  they  regard  her  as  a  Holy 
Ghostess,  in  some  sort. 

"It's  very  perplexing.  These  people — 
Samoans  and  Fijians — are  so  much  nicer,  and 
so  Jiiuch  better-mannered,  than  oneself.  They 
are  stronger,  beauti fuller,  kindlier,  more  hos- 
pitable and  courteous,  greater  lovers  of  beauty, 
and  even  wittier,  than  average  Europeans.  And 
they  are — imder  our  influence — a  dying  race. 
We  gradually  fill  their  lands  with  plantations 
and  Indian  coolies.  The  Ilawaians,  uj)  in  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  have  almost  altogether  gone, 
and  their  arts  and  music  with  them,  and  their 


118  RUPERT  BROOKE 

islands  are  a  replica  of  America.  A  cheerful 
thought,  that  all  these  places  are  to  become  in- 
distinguishable from  Denver  and  Birmingham 
and  Stuttgart,  and  the  people  of  dress  and  be- 
haviour precisely  hke  Herr  Schmidt,  and  Mr. 
Robinson,  and  Iliram  O.  Guggenheim.  And 
now  they're  so  .  .  .  it's  impossible  to  describe 
how  far  nearer  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven — or  the 
Garden  of  Eden — these  good,  naked,  laughing 
people  are  than  oneself  or  one's  friends.  .  .  . 
But  I  forget.  You  are  an  anti-socialist,  and  I 
mustn't  say  a  word  against  our  modern  indus- 
trial system.     I  beg  your  pardon. 

"I  go  down  to  the  coast  to  catch  a  boat  to  New 
Zealand,  where  I  shall  post  this.  Thence  to 
Tahiti,  to  hunt  for  lost  Gauguins.  Then  back 
to  barbarism  in  America.  God  knows  when  I 
shall  get  home.  In  the  spring,  I  hope.  Is  Eng- 
land still  there?     Forgive  this  endless  scrawl. 

*'I  suppose  you're  rushing  from  lunch-party 
to  lunch-party,  and  dance  to  dance,  and  opera 
to  political  platform.  Won't  you  come  and 
learn  how  to  make  a  hibiscus-wreath  for  your 
hair,  and  sail  a  canoe,  and  swim  two  minutes 
under  water  catching  turtles,  and  dive  forty  feet 
into  a  waterfall,  and  climb  a  cocoanut-palm? 
It's  more  worth  while." 


A  MEMOIR  119 

Sometimes  the  desire  for  England  and  his 
friends  came  uppermost.  "I'd  once  thought  it 
necessary  to  marry,"  he  wrote  to  Jacques 
Raverat  from  Fiji.  "I  approve  of  marriage  for 
the  world.  I  think  you're  all  quite  right,  so 
don't  be  alarmed.  But  not  for  me.  I'm  too 
old.  The  Point  of  ^Marriage  is  Peace — to  work 
in.  Rut  can't  one  get  it  otherwise?  Why,  cer- 
tainly, when  one's  old.  And  so  I  will.  I  know 
what  things  are  good:  friendship  and  work  and 
conversation.  These  I  shall  have.  How  one 
can  fill  life,  if  one's  energetic  and  knows  how  to 
dig!  I  have  thought  of  a  thousand  things  to 
do,  in  books  and  poems  and  plays  and  theatres 
and  societies  and  housebuilding  and  dinner- 
parties, when  I  get  Home.  We  shall  have  fun. 
Now  we  have  so  painfully  achieved  middle-age, 
shall  we  not  reap  the  fruits  of  that  achievement, 
my  dyspeptic  friend?  By  God,  yes!  Will  you 
come  and  walk  with  me  in  Spain  next  summer? 
And  will  you  join  me  on  the  Poet's  Round? — a 
walk  I've  planned.  One  starts  from  Charing 
Cross,  in  a  south-easterly  direction,  and  calls  on 
de  la  iSIare  at  Anerley,  and  finds  Davies  at 
Sevcnoaks — a  day's  march  to  Relloc  at  King's 
Head,  then  up  to  Wibson  ^  on  the  borders  of 
Gloucestershire,  back  by  Stratford,  Rugby,  and 

» Wilfrid  Gibson. 


120  RUPERT  BROOKE 

the  Chilterns,  where  ^Slasefield  and  Chesterton 
dwell.  Wouldn't  it  give  one  a  queer  idea  of 
England? 

"Three  months  a  year  I  am  going  to  live  with 
you  and  Gwen,  three  with  Dudley  and  Anne, 
three  with  the  Ranee,*  and  three  alone.  A  per- 
fect life.  I  almost  catch  the  next  boat  to  'Frisco 
at  the  thought  of  it."  (At  this  point  in  the  letter 
there  is  a  constellation  of  blots,  explained  as 
'Tears  of  Memory.') 

"There  is  nothing  in  the  world  like  friendship. 
And  there  is  no  man  who  has  had  such  friends 
as  I,  so  many,  so  fine,  so  various,  so  multiform, 
so  prone  to  laughter,  so  strong  in  affection,  and 
so  permanent,  so  trustworthy,  so  courteous,  so 
stern  with  vices  and  so  blind  to  faults  or  folly,  of 
such  swiftness  of  mind  and  strength  of  body,  so 
apt  both  to  make  jokes  and  to  understand  them. 
Also  their  faces  are  beautiful,  and  I  love  them. 
I  repeat  a  long  list  of  their  names  every  night 
before  I  sleep.  Friendship  is  always  exciting, 
and  yet  always  safe.  There  is  no  lust  in  it,  and 
therefore  no  poison.  It  is  cleaner  than  love, 
and  older;  for  children  and  very  old  people  have 
friends,  but  they  do  not  love.  It  gives  more  and 
takes  less,  it  is  fine  in  the  enjoying,  and  without 
pain  when  absent,  and  it  leaves  only  good  memo- 

*  His  name  for  his  mother. 


A  MEMOIR  121 

ries.  In  love  all  laughter  ends  with  an  ache,  but 
laughtei  is  the  very  garland  on  tlic  head  of  friend- 
ship. I  will  not  love,  and  I  will  not  be  loved. 
But  I  will  have  friends  round  me  continually, 
all  the  days  of  my  life,  and  in  whatever  lands  I 
may  be.  So  we  shall  laugh  and  eat  and  sing,  and 
go  great  journeys  in  boats  and  on  foot,  and  write 
plays  and  perform  them,  and  pass  innumerable 
laws  taking  their  money  from  the  rich.  ...  I 
err.  I  praise  too  extravagantly,  conveying  an 
impression  tliat  friendship  always  gives  peace. 
And  even  at  the  moment  I  feel  a  hunger,  too 
rending  for  complete  peace,  to  see  all  your  faces 
again  and  to  eat  food  with  you." 

Home  thoughts  from  abroad  of  a  different  or- 
der were  sent  to  Miss  Nesbitt: — "I  see  I'm  go- 
ing to  have  the  hell  of  an  uncomfortable  life," 
he  wrote.  "I  want  too  many  different  things.  I 
keep  now  pining  after  London.  I  want  to  talk, 
talk,  talk.  Is  there  anything  better  in  the  world 
than  sitting  at  a  table  and  eating  good  food  and 
drinking  great  drink,  and  discussing  everything 
under  the  sun  with  wise  and  brilliant  peo- 
ple?   

"Oh  but  I'm  going  to  have  such  a  time  when  I 
get  back.  I'm  going  to  have  the  loveliest  rooms 
in  King's,  and  I'm  going  to  spend  5  days  a  week 
there,  and  8  in  London  (that's  8,  stoopid),  and 


122  RUPERT  BROOKE 

in  King's  I'm  going  to  entertain  all  the  mad 
and  lovely  pe()])le  in  the  world,  and  I'm  never 
going  to  sit  down  to  dinner  without  a  philoso- 
pher, a  poet,  a  musician,  an  actress,  a  dancer,  and 
a  hishop  at  table  with  me.  I'm  going  to  get  up 
such  performances  as  will  turn  Cambridge  upside 
down.  I'm  going  to  have  Yeats  and  Caiman 
and  Craig  and  Barker  to  give  a  lecture  each  on 
modern  drama.  I'm  going  to  have  my  great 
play  in  the  Grantchester  garden.  I'm  going — 
oh,  hell,  I  don't  know  what  I'm  going  to  do — 
hut  every  morning  I  shall  drift  up  and  down  the 
hacks  in  a  punt,  discussing  anything  in  the  world 
with  anybody  who  desires." 

He  left  Fiji  in  December.  "Life's  been  get- 
ting madder  and  madder,"  he  wrote  from  Auck- 
land on  December  17th.  "I  tumbled  into  Fiji 
without  a  friend  or  an  introduction,  and  left  it 
a  month  later  amidst  the  loud  grief  of  the  united 
population,  white  and  black.  The  two  'boys' 
(aged  23  or  24)  I  took  with  me  when  I  went 
walking  through  the  centre  of  the  island,  to  carry 
my  bags,  are  my  sworn  and  eternal  friends.  One 
of  them  ('Ambele,'  under  which  I,  but  not  you, 
can  recognise  'Abel')  was  six  foot  high,  very 
broad,  and  more  perfectly  made  than  any  man  or 
statue  I  have  ever  seen.     His  gi*in  stretched  from 


A  MEMOIR  123 

ear  to  ear.  And  he  could  carry  me  across  rivers 
(when  I  was  tired  of  swimming  them,  for  we 
crossed  vast  rivers  every  mile  or  two)  for  a  hun- 
dred yards  or  so,  as  I  should  carry  a  hox  of 
maj:ches.  I  think  of  bringing  him  hack  with  me 
as  a  servant  or  bodyguard  to  England.  He 
loved  me  because,  though  I  was  far  weaker  than 
he,  I  was  far  braver.  The  Fijians  are  rather 
cowards.  And  on  precipices  I  am  peculiarly 
reckless.  The  boys  saved  me  from  rolling  off 
to  perdition  about  thirty  times,  and  respected  me 
for  it,  though  thinking  me  insane.  What  would 
you  say  if  I  turned  up  with  two  vast  cannibal 
servants,  black-skinned  and  perpetually  laugh- 
ing— all  of  us  attired  only  in  loin-cloths,  and  red 
flowers  in  our  hair?  I  think  I  should  be  irre- 
sistible. 

"Why,  precisely,  I'm  here,  I  don't  know.  I 
seem  to  have  missed  a  boat  somewhere,  and  I 
can't  get  on  to  Tahiti  till  the  beginning  of  Janu- 
ary. Damn.  And  I  hear  that  a  man  got  to 
Tahiti  two  months  ahead  of  me,  and  found — and 
carried  off — some  Gauguin  paintings  on  glass. 
DamnI 

"New  Zealand  turns  out  to  be  in  the  midst  of 
summer,  and  almost  exactly  like  England.  I 
eat  strawberries,  large  garden  strawberries, 
every  day;  and  it's  the  middle  of  December  I     It 


124  RUPERT  BROOKE 

feels  curiously  unnatural,  perverse,  like  some 
frightful  vice  out  of  Ilavelock  Ellis.  I  blush 
and  eat  secretively.  I'll  describe  New  Zealand 
another  day.  It's  a  sort  of  Fabian  England, 
very  upper-middle-class  and  gentle  and  happy 
(after  Canada),  no  poor,  and  the  Government 
owning  hotels  and  running  char-a-bancs.  All 
the  women  smoke,  and  dress  very  badly,  and  no- 
body drinks.  p],verybody  seems  rather  ugly — 
but  perhaps  that's  compared  with  the  South 
Seas." 

The  Englishness  of  New  Zealand  made  home 
affairs  vivid  to  him  again,  and  he  wrote  vehe- 
mently to  his  mother  about  the  Dublin  Strike. 
"I  feel  wild  about  Dublin.  I  always  feel  in 
strikes  that  'the  men  are  always  right,'  as  a  man 
says  in  Claylianger.  Of  course  the  poor  are 
always  right  against  the  rich,  though  often 
enough  the  men  are  in  the  wrong  over  some  point 
of  the  moment  (it's  not  to  be  wondered  at). 
But  Dublin  seems  to  be  one  of  the  clearest  cases 
on  record When  the  Times  begins  say- 
ing that  the  employers  are  in  the  wrong,  they 
must  be  very  unpardonably  and  rottenly  so  in- 
deed. I  do  hope  people  are  contributing  for  the 
wives  and  children  in  Dublin.  Could  you  send 
two  guineas  in  my  name?    I'll  settle  when  I  get 


A  MEMOIR  125 

back.  But  I'd  like  it  done  inuiiediately.  I  expect 
you  will  have  sent  some  yourself 

"The  queer  thing  [about  New  Zealand],"  he 
goes  on,  "is  that  they've  got  all  the  things  in  the 
Liberal  or  mild  Fabian  programme: — eight  hour 
day  (and  less) ,  bigger  old  age  pensions,  access  to 
the  land,  minimum  wage,  insurance,  etc.,  etc., 
and  yet  it's  not  Paradise.  The  same  troubles 
exist  in  much  the  same  form  (except  that  there's 
not  much  bad  poverty) .  Cost  of  living  is  rising 
quicker  than  wages.  There  are  the  same  trou- 
bles between  unions  and  employers,  and  between 
rich  and  poor.  I  suppose  there'll  be  no  peace 
anywhere  till  the  rich  are  curbed  altogether." 

On  the  voyage  from  New  Zealand  to  Tahiti  he 
made  great  friends  with  a  Lancashire  business 
man,  JNIr.  Harold  Ashworth,  who  wrote  after  his 
death  to  ]Mrs.  Brooke.  The  letters  show  the 
kind  of  impression  that  he  made  on  those  who 
met  him  at  this  time.  "I  am  happy  to  believe," 
says  Mr.  Ashworth,  "that  he  and  I  became  real 
friends,  and  many  a  time  I  would  invoke  his  aid 
when  my  ratlier  aggressive  Radicalism  brought 
the  'Smoke-room'  men  at  me  en  masse.  I  never 
met  so  entirely  likeable  a  chap,  and  when  I 
could  'get  him  going'  about  his  wanderings,  or 
provoke  him  into  discussions  about  I^iterature, 
I  was  one  walking  ear ! I  ahnost  wept 


126  RUPERT  BROOKE 

to  know  I  could  never  again  see  that  golden  head 
and  kindly  smile — 'Young  Apollo,'  I  used  to 
dub  him  in  my  mind,  whilst  the  fresh  wind  tossed 
his  hair,  and  his  boyish  eyes  lit  up  with  pleasure 
at  some  of  my  anecdotes  of  strange  people  and 

places Your  son  was  not  merely  a 

genius;  what  is  perhaps  more  important,  he  had  a 
charm  that  was  literally  like  Sunshine.  To  say 
his  manner  was  perfect  is  putting  it  quite  inade- 
quately  His  memory  is  blessed  by 

hundreds  of  men  like  me  who  were  so  fortunate 
as  to  meet  him  and  Mere  the  better  for  that  happy 
adventure." 

Another  friend  made  on  his  travels  was 
Reginald  Berkeley,  who  was  his  chief  companion 
on  his  excursions  in  Fiji.  Ruj^ert  sent  him  from 
the  s.s.  Niagara  a  long  letter  about  the  technique 
of  writing.  "One  can  only  advise  people  two 
or  three  years  younger,"  Jie  says.  "Beyond  that, 
one  has  forgotten."  The  end  of  it  shows  him 
insisting  on  the  importance  for  artists  of  the  atti- 
tude Mhich  he  had  recommended  for  everyone  in 
his  letter  to  Ben  Keeling  of  three  years  before. 
"Finally,"  he  says,  "I  charge  you,  be  kind  to  life; 
and  do  not  bruise  her  with  the  bludgeon  of  the 
a  priori.  Poor  dirty  woman,  she  responds  to 
sympathy.  S\Tnpathetic  imagination  with  every- 
body and  everything  is  the  artist's  one  duty.    He 


A  MEMOIR  127 

should  be  one  with  every  little  clerg\'^man,  and 
the  stockbroker's  most  secret  hope  shoiihl  be  his 
hope.  In  the  end,  the  words  of  Strindl)crg's 
heroine  are  the  only  motto,  'The  race  of  man  is 
greatly  to  be  pitied.'  Isn't  that  true?  Hatred 
should  be  given  out  sparingly.  It's  too  valuable 
to  use  carelessly.  And,  misused,  it  prevents 
understanding.  And  it  is  our  duty  to  under- 
stand; for  if  we  don't,  no  one  else  will." 

His  next  stay  was  about  three  months  in 
Tahiti.  "I've  decided  to  stay  here  another 
month,"  he  wrote  to  Miss  Nesbitt  in  February, 
"for  two  very  good  reasons:  (1)  that  I  haven't 
enough  money  to  get  out,  (2)  that  I've  found 
the  most  ideal  place  in  the  world  to  live  and  work 
in.^  ^V  wide  verandah  over  a  blue  lagoon,  a 
wooden  pier  with  deep  clear  water  for  diving, 
and  coloured  fish  that  swim  between  your  toes. 
There  also  swim  between  your  toes,  more  or  less, 
scores  of  laughing  brown  babies  from  two  years 
to  fourteen.  Canoes  and  boats,  rivers,  fishing 
with  spear  net  and  line,  the  most  wonderful  food 
in  the  world — strange  fishes  and  vegetables  per- 
fectly cooked.  Euro})e  slides  from  me  tcrrify- 
ingly \^^ill  it  come  to  your  having  to 

*This  was  at  Mataiea,  about  30  miles  from  the  chief  town,  Pa- 
peete, 


128  RUPERT  BROOKE 

fetch  me?  The  boat's  ready  to  start;  the  brown 
lovely  people  in  their  bright  clothes  are  gathered 
on  the  old  wharf  to  wave  her  away.  Everyone 
has  a  white  flower  behind  their  ear.  Mamua  has 
given  me  one.  Do  you  know  the  significance  of 
a  white  flower  worn  over  the  ear?  A  white 
flower  over  the  right  ear  means  'I  am  looking 
for  a  sweetheart.'  And  a  wliite  flower  over  the 
left  ear  means  'I  have  found  a  sweetheart.'  And 
a  white  flower  over  each  ear  means  'I  have  one 
sweetheart,  and  am  looking  for  another.'  A 
white  flower  over  each  ear,  my  dear,  is  dreadfully 
the  most  fashionable  way  of  adorning  yourself  in 
Tahiti. 

"Bon  voyage  to  the  travellers.  Good  luck 
to  everybody  else.  Love  to  the  whole  world. 
Tonight  we  will  put  scarlet  flowers  in  our  hair, 
and  sing  strange  slumbrous  South  Sea  songs  to 
the  concertina,  and  drink  red  French  wine,  and 
dance,  and  bathe  in  a  soft  lagoon  by  moonlight, 
and  eat  great  squelchy  tropical  fruits,  custard- 
apples,  papaia,  pomegranate,  mango,  guava  and 
the  rest.  Urana.  I  have  a  million  lovely  and 
exciting  things  to  tell  you — but  not  now." 

How  thoroughly  he  became  imbued  with  the 
life,  the  feeling,  and  the  philosophy  of  the  islands, 
appears  from  a  sociological  epistle  which  he  wrote 


A  MEMOIR  129 

to  Jacques  Raverat  after  his  return  to  Eng- 
land. "As  for  Land,  my  Frog,  we  must  have 
a  great  deal  held  in  common.  It  is  good  for 
men  to  work  of  themselves,  but  not  too  much  for 
themselves.  In  my  part  of  the  world,  if  we  want 
to  build  a  canoe,  we  all  put  wreaths  in  our  hair, 
and  take  the  town  hatchet,  and  Bill's  axe,  and 
each  his  own  hunting-knife,  and  have  a  bit  of  pig 
each  for  luck,  and  a  drink,  and  go  out.  And  as 
we  go  we  sing.  And  when  we  have  got  to  a 
large  tree  we  sit  round  it.  And  the  two  biggest 
men  take  the  axes  and  hit  the  tree  in  turn.  And 
the  rest  of  us  beat  our  hands  rhythmically  and 
sing  a  song  saying  'That  is  a  tree — cut  down  the 
tree — we  will  make  a  boat,'  and  so  on.  And 
when  those  two  are  tired,  they  drink  and  sit,  and 
other  two  take  their  places  .  .  .  and  later  the 
hollowing  of  the  canoe,  and  the  fashioning  of  an 
out-rigger,  and  the  making  of  benches  and  the 
shaping  of  paddles.  And  when  all's  done,  we 
go  home  and  sing  all  night,  and  dance  a  great 
deal.     For  we  have  another  canoe. 

"And  when  you  have  got  a  lot  of  other  God- 
dites  together  and  started  to  build  a  Cathedral, 
why,  you'll  see  what  fun  it  is  working  together, 
instead  of  in  a  dirty  little  corner  alone,  suspicious, 
greedy,  competitive,  hating  all  the  world,  like 


130  RUPERT  BROOKE 

a  modern  artist  or  a  French  peasant  or  a  money- 
lender or  a  golfer." 

He  had  begun  writing  verse  again,  and  in  the 
'wide  verandah'  he  wrote  or  finished  Tiare 
Tahiti.^  Retrospect,  and  the  Great  Lover/  which 
he  sent  me  (he  had  appointed  me  his  'literary 
agent  or  grass-executor'  during  his  travels)^  for 
A^ew  Nnmhers.  This  publication  had  been 
planned  in  July  by  correspondence  with  Las- 
celles  Abercrombie,  John  Drinkwater  and  Wil- 
frid Gibson.  They  meant  at  first  to  call  it  The 
Gallows  Garland,  after  The  Gallows,  Aber- 
crombie's  cottage  in  Gloucestershire,  from  which 
it  was  to  be  published;  and  Rupert  thought  the 
change  very  stupid.  He  had  sketched  the  con- 
tents of  the  first  number.  Abercrombie  was  to 
contribute  a  short  epic  on  Asshurbanipal  and 
Nebuchadnezzar,  Drinkwater  an  ode  called  The 
Sonoritij   of   God,   and    Gibson   two   narrative 

^  A  postscript  to  a  letter  to  his  mother  ehicidates  a  line  in  this 
poem.  "They  call  me  Fuintre  here — it  means  'fair'  in  Tahitian — 
because  I  have  fair  hair !" 

'  Speculation  has  been  aroused  by  the  line  in  this  poem  praising 
'the  comfortable  smell  of  friendly  fingers.'  When  asked  whote 
lingers,  he  said  his  nurse's;  and  admitted  that  it  might  have  been 
the  soap. 

■'  He  took  large  views  of  my  duties.  "Damn  it,"  he  had  written 
from  Vancouver,  "wliat's  tiie  good  of  a  friend  if  he  can't  sit 
down  and  write  off  a  few  poems  for  one  at  a  pinch?  That's  what 
I  count  on  your  doing,  if  the  editors  press." 

I  hope  this  note  will  not  start  a  vain  hunt  for  spuria  among  the 
published  }>oems. 


A  MEMOIR  131 

poems,  Poor  Bloody  Bill  and  The  Brave  Poor 
Thing,  from  a  series  named  Gas-Stoves. 
Rupert  himself  did  not  expect  to  manage  more 
than  one  sonnet,  to  be  entitled  Oh  dear!  Oh 
dear!  The  first  nmnber  came  out  in  February 
1914;  and  after  three  more  issues  it  was  discon- 
tinued because  of  the  war,  before  his  death  had 
broken  the  fair  companionship. 

To  illustrate  his  method  of  work  at  this  time,  it 
may  be  of  interest  to  print  the  first  draft  of  the 
Psychical  Research  sonnet,  with  his  corrections: 

,  when  we're  beyond  the  sun. 
Not  with  vain  tears  we'll  beat,  when  all  is  done. 
We'll  beat 
Unheard  on  the  substantial  doors,  nor  tread 

aimless 
Those  dusty  high-roads  of  the  wandering  Dead 
Plaintive  for  Earth;  but  rather  turn  and  run 
Remembering  Earth.     We'll  turn,  I  think,  and  run 
Down  some  close-covered  by-way  of  the  air. 
Some 

Or  low  sweet  alley  between  wind  and  wind. 
Stoop  under  faint  gleams,  thread  the  shadows,  find 
Pull  down  the  shadows  over  us,  and  find 
Some 

A  whispering  ghost- forgotten  nook,  and  there 
Spend  in  pure  converse  our  eternal  day; 
Think  each  in  each,  immediately  wise; 


132  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Learn  all  we  lacked  before,  hear,  know,  and  say 
What  this  tunuiltuous  body  now  denies; 
And  feel,  who  have  laid  our  groping  hands  away; 
And  see,  no  longer  blinded  by  our  eyes.* 

But  to  return  to  Tahiti.  "I've  been  ill,"  he 
wrote  to  me  on  iNIarch  7th.  "I  got  some  beastly 
coral-poisoning  into  my  legs,  and  a  local  microbe 
on  the  top  of  that,  and  made  the  places  worse 
by  neglecting  them,  and  sea-bathing  all  day 
(which  turns  out  to  be  the  worst  possible  thing) . 
I  was  in  the  country  when  it  came  on  bad,  and 
tried  native  remedies,  which  took  all  the  skin  off, 
and  produced  such  a  ghastly  appearance  that  I 

hurried  into  town I've  got  over  it  now, 

and  feel  very  spry.  I'm  in  a  hovel  at  the  back  of 
the  hotel,  and  contemplate  the  yard.  The  ex- 
traordinary life  of  the  place  flows  round  and 
through  my  room — for  here  no  one,  man  or 
woman,  scruples  to  come  through  one's  room  at 
any  moment,  if  it  happens  to  be  a  short  cut.  By 
day  nothing  much  happens  in  the  yard — except 

^  Though  there  are  no  changes  in  the  concluding  lines,  I  print 
them  for  the  sake  of  a  parallel,  shown  mc  by  John  Drinkwater, 
in  Andrew  Marvell's  Dialogue  between  Soul  and  Body,  where 
Soul  says: 

O,  who  shall  from  this  dungeon  raise 

A  soul  enslaved  so  many  ways, 

W^ith  txjlts  of  bones,  that   fettered  stands 

In  feet,  and  manacled  in  hands; 

Here  blinded  with  an  eye,  and  there 

Deaf  with  the  driunming  of  an  ear? 


A  MEMOIR  133 

when  a  horse  tried  to  eat  a  hen  the  other  after- 
noon. But  by  night,  after  ten,  it's  filled  with  flit- 
ting figures  of  girls,  with  wreaths  of  white  flow- 
ers, keeping  assignations.  Occasionally  two 
rivals  meet,  and  fill  the  darker  corners  with  cur- 
sings and  scratchings.  Or  occasionally  a  youth 
intercepts  a  faithless  lady,  and  has  a  pretty  oper- 
atic scene  under  my  window.  It  is  all — all  Pa- 
peete— like  a  Renaissance  Italy,  with  the  venom 
taken  out.  No,  simpler,  light-come  and  light-go, 
passionate  and  forgetful,  like  children,  and  all 
the  time  South  Pacific,  that  is  to  say  unmalicious 
and  good-tempered 

"I  really  do  feel  a  little  anchorless.  I  shall 
be  glad  to  be  back  among  you  all,  and  tied  to 
somewhere  in  England.  I'll  never,  never,  never 
go  to  sea  again.  All  I  w^ant  in  life  is  a  cottage, 
and  leisure  to  write  supreme  poems  and  plays. 
I  can't  do  it  in  this  vagabondage." 

I  don't  know  what  happened  between  this  let- 
ter and  the  next  to  produce  the  gloom  it  shows 
about  his  work.  He  had  always,  at  school  and 
onwards,  been  apt  to  have  fits  of  thinking  that 
he  would  never  write  again,  but  this  time  the 
foreboding  seems  more  serious  than  usual.  He 
begins  cheerfully  'some  time  in  ]March':  "It's  so 
funny;  getting  a  letter  of  January  25,  and  not 
having  heard  anything  from  anybody  since  Octo- 


134  RUPERT  BROOKE 

ber.  Your  letter  of  Xovember,  announcing 
your  marriage  with  [someone  very  improbable]  ; 
your  kindly  Christmas  information  about  the 
disastrous  fire  in  Bilton  Road  and  the  disposal 
of  the  Ranee's  and  Alfred's  cinders;  your  New 
Year's  epistle  announcing  your,  Wilfrid's  and 
Albert's  Knighthoods;  the  later  letter  that  re- 
counted your  conversations  with  Shaw,  the 
Earthquake,  the  War  with  Germany,  the  Chinese 
Ballet,  Stravinsky's  comic  opera,  the  new  El 
Greco,  Gilbert  [CannanJ's  trial,  Masefield's 
latest  knock-about  farce,  xVrthur  Benson's  duel 
...  all  these  I  have  not  yet  had.  They  await 
me  in  'Frisco.  So  I  take  up  the  threads  at  the 
25th  of  January — now  itself  some  way  down  in 
the  heap  of  yesterday's  seven  thousand  years — 
and  study  them  rather  confusedly.  Flecker — 
Wilfrid — poetry — plays — jNIoulin  d'Or — Hullo 
Tango!  they  all  stir,  these  names,  some  dusty 
memories  away  in  the  back  of  my  subconscious- 
ness. Somewhere  they  must  have  meant  some- 
thing to  me,  in  another  life.  A  vision  of  taxis 
slides  across  the  orange  and  green  of  the  sunset. 
For  a  moment  the  palms  dwindle  to  lamp-posts. 

So  a  poor  ghost  beside  his  misty  streams 

Is  haunted  by  strange  doubts  and  fugitive  dreams. 

Hints   of  a  pre-Lethean  life,  of  men, 

RockS;  stars,  and  skin,  things  unintelligible. 


A  MEMOIR  135 

And  the  sun  on  waving  grass — he  knows  not  when, 
And  feet  that  ran,  but  where,  he  cannot  tell.^ 

(You  recognise  the  master-hand?) 

"I  must  come  back  and  see  if  I  can  take  to  it 
again.  Plan  out  a  life  for  me  for  next  year, 
Eddie.  (Here  follows  another  sketch  for  living 
at  Cambridge,  much  the  same  as  the  one  already 
given.)  The  other  half  of  the  week  I  shall  re- 
side with  j'ou — I  warn  you. 

"But,  my  dear,  I  doubt  if  you'll  have  me. 
The  Game  is  Up,  Eddie.  If  I've  gained  facts 
through  knocking  about  with  Conrad  characters 
in  a  Gauguin  entourage,^— V\q  lost  a  dream  or 
two.  I  tried  to  be  a  poet.  And  because  I'm  a 
clever  writer,  and  because  I  was  forty  times  as 
sensitive  as  anybody  else,  I  succeeded  a  little. 
Es  ist  voruher;  es  ist  unwiederruflich  zu  Eiide. 
I  am  what  I  came  out  here  to  be.  Hard,  quite, 
quite  hard.  I  have  become  merely  a  minor  char- 
acter in  a  Kipling  story. 

"I'll  never  be  able  to  write  anything  more,  I 
think;  or  perhaps  I  can  do  plays  of  a  sort.  .  .  . 
I  think  I'll  have  to  manage  a  theatre.  I  feel 
very  energetic;  and  very  capable.  Is  that  a 
great  come-down?  I  think  that  what  I  really 
feel  like  is  living.     I  want  to  talk  and  talk  and 

*  An  unrevised  form  of  part  of  the  sonnet  IIaunting$. 


136  RUPERT  BROOKE 

talk  .  .  .  and  in  the  intervals  have  extraordinary 
adventures.  Perhaps  this,  too,  is  a  come-down. 
But  haven't  I,  at  2G,  reached  the  age  when  one 
should  begin  to  learn?  An  energy  that  had 
rushed  on  me  with  the  cessation  of  my  leprous 
skin-disease,  and  the  approaching  end  of  six 
months'  peace  of  soul,  is  driving  me  furiously  on. 
This  afternoon  I  go  fishing  in  a  canoe  with  a 
native  girl  on  a  green  and  purple  reef.  Tonight 
from  ten  to  two,  spearing  fish  in  the  same  lagoon 
by  torchlight.  Tomorrow  at  dawn,  up  into  the 
mountains  on  foot  with  a  mad  Englishman,  four 
natives,  and  a  half-caste,  to  a  volcanic  lake  in  the 
interior.  There  we  build  a  house  and  stay  for 
two  days.  The  natives  return,  and  the  M.E. 
and  myself  push  on  for  and  pass  down  to  the 
other  coast.     Perhaps  we  get  it.     Perhaps  not. 

"In  any  case  we  hope  to  see  some  ghosts — 
they  abound  in  the  interior.  They  come  to  you 
by  night,  and  as  you  watch  them  their  bellies 
burst,  and  their  entrails  fall  to  the  ground,  and 
their  eyes — unpupilled  balls  of  white — fall  out 
too,  and  they  stink  and  shine.  This  morning  I've 
been  reading  The  Triumph  of  Time,  and  Bartho- 
lomew Fair 

"Learning,  learning,  learning.  ...  Is  there 
anything  else  to  do  except  tastel  Will  you  come 
with  me   to   jNIorocco,   Persia,   Russia,   Egypt, 


A  MEMOIR  137 

Abyssinia,  and  the  Aran  Islands?  I'm  afraid  I 
shan't  be  able  to  settle  down  at  home.  It'll  be 
an  advantage  that  I  can  come  to  England 
through  America.  For  then,  I'll  find  it  so 
lovely  that  I  won't  be  hankering  after  sunlight 
and  brown  people  and  rainbow-coloured  fish. 
At  least,  I  won't  for  some  months,  or  a  year. 

**I'll  learn  at  home,  a  bit.  There's  so  much 
to  learn  there — if  only  one's  sensible  enough  to 
know  it.  And  I  feel  hard  enough  to  make  the 
attempt.  I  want  to  love  my  friends  and  hate  my 
enemies,  again.  Both  greatly — but  not  too 
much.  Which  brings  me  round  to  [an  enemy] 
and  Clubs I  want  a  club  to  take  an  oc- 
casional stranger  into,  for  a  drink,  and  to  read  the 
papers  in,  and  sometimes  to  have  a  quiet  meal  in. 
Where  do  you  think  I  should  go  ?  I  want  some- 
where I  needn't  always  be  spick  and  span  in, 
and  somewhere  I  don't  have  to  pay  a  vast  sum. 
Alas,  why  are  there  no  decent  clubs?  What  do 
the  jolly  people  all  do?  I  want  to  belong  to  the 
same  club  as  de  la  INIare.  Where  does  de  la 
Mare  go?     To  Anerley,  S.E.,  I  suppose. 

There  was  once  a-mctrist  of  Anerley, 

Whose  neighbours  were  mundane  but  mannerly. 

They  don't  cavil  the  least 

At  a  stray  anapa-st. 
But  they  do  bar  his  spondees  in  Anerley. 


138  RUPERT  BROOKE 

I'll  post  this  and  send  off  my  bundle  of  MSS. 
from  'Frisco." 

lie  left  Tahiti  in  April.  "Last  night,"  he 
wrote  on  the  steamer,  "I  looked  for  the  Southern 
Cross  as  usual,  and  looked  for  it  in  vain — like 
the  moon  for  Omar  Khayyam — it  had  gone  down 
below  the  horizon.  It  is  still  shining  and  wheel- 
ing for  those  good  brown  people  in  the  islanas — 
and  they're  laughing  and  kissing  and  swimming 
and  dancing  beneath  it — but  for  me  it  is  set;  and 
I  don't  know  that  I  shall  ever  see  it  again.  It's 
queer.  I  was  sad  at  heart  to  leave  Tahiti.  But 
I  resigned  myself  to  the  vessel,  and  watched  the 
green  shores  and  rocky  peaks  fade  with  hardly  a 
pang.  I  had  told  so  many  of  those  that  loved 
me,  so  often,  'oh  yes,  I'll  come  back — next  year 
perhaps,  or  the  year  after' — that  I  suppose  I'd 
begun  to  believe  it  myself.  It  was  only  yester- 
day, when  I  knew  that  the  Southern  Cross  had 
left  me,  that  I  suddenly  realised  I  had  left  be- 
hind those  lovely  places  and  lovely  people,  per- 
haps for  ever.  I  reflected  that  there  was  surely 
nothing  else  like  them  in  this  world,  and  very 
probably  nothing  in  the  next,  and  that  I  was 
going  far  away  from  gentleness  and  beauty  and 
kindliness,  and  the  smell  of  the  lagoons,  and  the 
thrill  of  that  dancing,  and  the  scarlet  of  the 
flamboyants,  and  the  white  and  gold  of  other 


A  MEMOIR  189 

flowers ;  and  that  I  was  going  to  America,  which 
is  full  of  harshness  and  hideous  sights,  and  ugly 
people,  and  civilisation,  and  corruption,  and 
bloodiness,  and  all  evil.  So  I  wept  a  little,  and 
very  sensibly  went  to  bed 

"Certain  reprehensible  corners  of  my  heart 
whisper  to  me,  'There's  a  village  in  Samoa,  with 
the  moonlight  on  the  beach' — or  'I've  heard  of  a 
hill  in  Japan' — or  'one  said  there's  an  inn  in 
Thibet  over  a  sheer  precipice' — or  'the  Victoria 
Nyanza  is  an  attractive  lake' — or  'that  trail  in  the 
North-West  up  the  ^Mackenzie — Morris  said 
he'd  go  whenever  I  \t anted' — or  'I  wonder  if  it's 
true  about  that  flower  in  the  Andes  that  smells 
like  no  other  flower  upon  earth,  and  when  once  a 
man  has  smelt  it  he  can't  but  return  there  to  live 
in  those  hills  in  the  end,  though  he  come  back 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth.' 

"I'll  be  Wordsworth's  lark,  that  soars  but 
doesn't  roam,  true  to  the  kindred  points  of 
heaven  and  home.  These  scraps  of  English 
poetry  start  whispering  within  me — that  means 
I'm  Xorth  of  the  Equator,  doesn't  it?  It's  a 
good  sign,  perhaps.  English  thoughts  are  wak- 
ing in  me.  They'll  fetch  me  back.  Call  me 
home,  I  pray  you.  I've  been  away  long  enough. 
I'm  older  than  I  was.  I've  left  bits  of  me  about 
— some  of  my  hair  in  Canada,  and  one  skin  in 


140  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Honolulu,  and  another  in  Fiji,  and  a  bit  of  a 
third  in  Tahiti,  and  half  a  tooth  in  Samoa,  and 
bits  of  my  heart  all  over  the  place.  I'm  deader 
than  I  was.  Partir,  ccst  ton  jours  mourir  un  peu 
— you  know  that  admirable  and  true  proverb, 
don't  you?  A  little  old  Frenchman,  a  friend  of 
mine,  told  it  me  as  we  leaned  over  the  rail  and 
w^atched  the  waving  crowds  and  the  red  roofs  and 
the  hills  and  the  clouds  dwindle  and  vanish.  He 
was  going  home  to  France  for  a  year  for  his 
health.  'Home,'  he'd  be  angry  at  that.  'Mon 
home  c'cst  id/  he  told  me  repeatedly.  He  is  mar- 
ried to  a  native  woman  these  fifteen  years — no 
children  of  his  own,  but  plenty  adopted.  She  was 
so  much  finer  than  a  white  woman,  he  sighed — so 
lovely,  so  faithful,  so  competent,  so  charming  and 
happy,  and  so  extraordinarily  intelligent.  I 
told  him  what  Tagore  told  me  about  white 
women  compared  with  Indian,  and  he  gave  me 
his  observations,  and  we  entirely  agreed,  and 
forgot  our  sorrows  in  inventing  bilingual  insults 
to  the  swarms  of  ugly  American  and  Colonial 
girls  on  board." 

"Oh,  God!  Oh,  God!"  his  next  letter  to  me 
began,  from  San  Francisco  in  April.  "How  I 
hate  civilisation  and  houses  and  trams  and  col- 
lars." But  the  shock  was  tempered  to  him. 
"I've  found  good  friends  in  the  quieter  parts  of 


A  MEMOIR  141« 

this  region,  who  live  in  a  garden  filled  with  roses 
and  hyacinths  and  morning-glory.  So  I'll  rest  a 
day  or  two  and  try  to  get  over  the  effects  of  my 
first  re-entry  into  civilisation.  And  then  I'll 
sneak  away  East  and  come  home.  I  want  to  live 
in  a  hut  by  a  river  and  pretend  I'm  Polynesian. 
Will   you   come   and    see   me   o'   week's    ends? 

Oh!  Oh!  I  am  old  as  death.    Urania!" 

And  from  the  train:  "I  read  books  on  Indirect 
Primaries,^  just  to  get  the  South  Seas  out  of  my 
blood.  One  must  remember  one  has  trousers  on 
again.  I  had  a  faint  thought  of  going  to  Mex- 
ico. But  I  guess  it  won't  be  much  of  a  war. 
You'll  be  vanishing  for  Whitsuntide  soon.  A 
yachting  trip  to  Ulster?  I  do  hope  you're  going 
to  let  the  Orangemen  slit  all  the  priests'  throats 
first;  and  then  shoot  them.  I'll  enlist  on  either 
side,  any  day.     Your  gnostic.  Rupert.^' 

"It's  eleven  months,"  he  wrote  to  ]Miss  Xesbitt 
from  Arizona,  "that  I've  not  been  looked  after, 
and  my  clothes  are  in  an  awful  state,  and  my  hair 
not  cut,  and  I  rarely  shave.  I'm  so  tired  of  it. 
Comprenny?  Do  you  get  me?  I  shall — (pre- 
pare your  ears  and  hold  tight) — shall  sail  from 
New  York  on  June  Gth,  and  by  June  loth  I  shall 

'  He  was  also  reading  Boswell.  "I've  discovered,"  he  wrote, 
"that  Dr.  Johnson  is  the  only  man  I  love.  An  Englishman,  by 
God!" 


Ii2  RUPERT  BROOKE 

be  in  London.  My  dear,  one  thing  I  would 
implore  you.  It's  very  silly.  But  don't  tell 
anybody  the  exact  day  I'm  coming  back.  It's 
my  fancy  to  blow  in  on  them  unexpected — just 
to  wander  into  Raymond  Buildings  and  hear 
Eddie  squeak  'Oh,  my  dear,  I  thought  you  were 
in  Tahiti!'  It's  axvfly  silly  and  romantic,  but 
the  thought  does  give  me  the  keenest  and  most 
exquisite  pleasure.  Don't  give  away  one  of  the 
first  poets  in  England — but  there  is  in  him  still  a 
very  very  small  portion  that's  just  a  little  child- 
ish." 

"I  have  such  news,"  he  wrote  in  his  next  letter. 
"It  begins  with  Maurice  Browne  ^  and  his  wife 
going  to  Europe  a  week  sooner  than  I  had 
planned  to.  We  squabbled,  I  saying  they  should 
defer  their  departure  a  week  for  the  pleasure  of 
going  with  me;  they,  ridiculously,  that  I  should 
hasten  my  leaving  this  land  some  seven  days 
for  the  honour  of  their  companionship.  Neither 
side  would  yield;  so  we  parted  in  wrath.  They 
pettily,  I  with  some  dignity.  Coming  here,  I 
found  two  engagements  fallen  through ;  and  last 
night  I  dreamed  very  vividly  that  I  arrived  in 
England,  and  telephoned  to  everybody  I  knew, 
and  they  were  awfully  nice,  and  then  went  round 
and  saw  them,  and  they  were  lovely.    Friends  I 

'  Director  of  the  Little  ITieatre  at  Chicago. 


A  MEMOIR  143 

had  known  long  ago,  between  whom  and  myself 
evil  and  pain  has  come,  greeted  me  in  the  old 
first  way;  and  other  friends  who  have  stayed 
friends  were  wonderfully  the  same;  and  there 

were  new  friends I  woke  laughing  and 

crying.  I  felt  I  mujit  get  back.  I  telephoned  to 
Browne,  flew  to  some  agents,  and  in  consecjuence 
I  sail  from  New  York  on  oNIay  29th,  and  reach 
Plymouth — oh  blessed  name,  oh  loveliness!  Ply- 
mouth— was  there  ever  so  sweet  and  droll  a 
sound?  Drake's  Plymouth,  English  "Western 
Plymouth,  city  where  men  speak  softly,  and 
things  are  sold  for  shillings,  not  for  dollars ;  and 
there  is  love,  and  beauty,  and  old  houses ;  and  be- 
yond which  there  are  little  fields,  very  green, 
bounded  by  small  piled  walls  of  stone;  and  be- 
hind them — I  know  it — the  brown  and  black, 
splintered,  haunted  moor.  By  that  the  train 
shall  go  up;  by  Dartmouth,  where  my  brother 
was — I  will  make  a  litany;  by  Torquay,  where 
Verrall  stayed;  and  by  Paignton,  where  I  have 
walked  in  the  rain;  past  Ilsington,  where  John 
Ford  was  born,  and  Appledore,  in  the  inn  of 
which  I  wrote  a  poem  against  a  commercial  trav- 
eller; by  Dawlish,  of  which  John  Keats  sang; 
within  sight  of  AViddicombe,  where  old  Uncle 
Tom  Cobley  rode  a  mare;  not  a  dozen  miles  from 
John  Galsworthy  at  INIanaton;  within  sight  al- 


144  RUPERT  BROOKE 

most  of  that  hill  at  Drewsteignton  on  which  I 
lay  out  all  one  September  night,  crying — and  to 
Exeter,  and  to  Ottery  St.  IVIarj'-  where  Coleridge 
sojourned;  and  across  Wiltshire,  where  men  built 
and  sang  many  centuries  before  the  Aquila.  Oh 
noble  train,  oh  glorious  and  forthright  and  Eng- 
lish train  1  I  will  look  round  me  at  the  English 
faces,  and  out  at  the  English  fields,  and  I  will 

pray reach  Plymouth,  as  I  was  saying  when 

I  was  interrupted,  on  Friday,  June  5th." 

I  got  wind  of  his  design  to  arrive  like  a  bolt 
from  the  blue,  and  represented  the  disaster  it 
would  be  if  he  came  and  found  the  door  closed 
against  him.  He  yielded,  and  at  2.45  a.m.  on 
June  6th  (for  the  forthright  English  train  was 
very  late)  Denis  Browne  and  I  met  him  at  Pad- 
dington. 


VI 


All  the  old  threads  were  picked  up  at  once. 
*'To  the  poor  stay-at-home,"  writes  Walter  de  la 
Mare,  "the  friend  who  placidly  reappeared  from 
the  ends  of  the  earth  seemed  as  little  changed  as 
one  who  gaily  and  laughingly  goes  to  bed  and 
gaily  and  laughingly  comes  down  next  morning 
after  a  perfectly  refreshing  sleep."  He  was  still 
exactly  the  'Young  Apollo'  of  Mrs.  Cornford's 


A  MEMOIR  145 

Cambridge  epigram;  though  the  glint  of  quite 
peculiarly  real  shining  gold  that  had  always  been 
in  his  hair  had  been  tanned  out  of  it  by  the  South- 
ern sun ;  and  though  one  felt,  in  a  hundred  inde- 
finable ways,  that  he  was  now  more  than  ever 
'prepared' ;  not,  as  it  turned  out,  for  the  'long  lit- 
tleness of  life,'  but  rather  for  its  brief  greatness. 
The  morning  after  his  return  he  hurried  oft'  to 
Rugby  for  a  few  days  with  his  mother.  Then  he 
had  six  crowded,  happy  weeks,  mostly  in  Lon- 
don, seeing  old  friends  and  making  new  ones — 
including  Lascelles  Abercrombie,  whom  he  met 
for  the  first  time,  though  they  had  long  been 
friends  by  proxy  and  by  correspondence.  His 
shjTiess,  which  had  always  been  a  part  of  his 
rather  curious  modesty  and  'unspoiltness,'  was 
wearing  off ;  and  I  am  told  he  confessed,  on  being 
asked,  that  it  had  now  dawned  upon  him  for  the 
first  time  that  when  he  came  into  a  room  where 
there  were  new  people  the  chances  were  that  they 
would  like  him,  rather  than  not. 

At  the  end  of  July  came  the  war-cloud — and 
then  the  war.  He  has  described  his  feelings  when 
he  heard  the  news  in  the  essay  An  Unuifu-al 
Young  Man  (the  setting  is  imaginary — he  was 
not  returning  from  a  cruise,  but  staying  with  the 
Cornfords  in  Norfolk) .    At  first  he  was  just  un- 


146  RUPERT  BROOKE 

happy  and  bewildered.  "I'm  so  uneasy — sub- 
consciously," he  wrote.  "All  the  vague  perils  of 
the  time — the  world  seems  so  dark — and  I'm 
vaguely  frightened.  I  feel  hurt  to  think  that 
France  may  suffer.  And  it  hurts,  too,  to  think 
that  Germany  may  be  harmed  by  Russia.  And 
I'm  anxious  that  England  may  act  rightly.  I 
can't  bear  it  if  she  does  wrong." 

"I've  just  been  to  a  music-hall,"  he  wrote  early 
in  August.  "It  was  pretty  full.  Miss  C.  Loftus 
was  imitating  somebody  I  saw  infinite  years 
ago — Elsie  Janis — in  her  imitation  of  a  prehis- 
toric figure  called  Frank  Tinney.  God !  how  far 
away  it  all  seemed.  Then  a  dreadful  cinemato- 
graphic reproduction  of  a  hand  drawing  patriotic 
things — Harry  Furniss  it  was,  funny  pictures  of 
a  soldier  and  a  sailor  (at  the  time  I  suppose  dying 
in  Belgium),  a  caricature  of  the  Kaiser,  greeted 
with  a  perfunctory  hiss — nearly  everyone  sat  si- 
lent. Then  a  scribbled  message  was  shown: 
'War  declared  with  Austria  11,9.'  There  was  a 
volley  of  quick,  low  hand-clapping — more  a  sig- 
nal of  recognition  than  anything  else.  Then  we 
dispersed  into  Trafalgar  Square  and  bought  mid- 
night War  editions.  ...  In  all  these  days  I 
haven't  been  so  near  tears;  there  w^as  such  trag- 
edy and  dignity  in  the  people 


A  MEMOIR  147 

"If  there's  any  good  in  anything  I've  done, 
it's  made  by  the  beauty  and  goodness  of  ...  a 
few  I've  known.  All  these  peo])le  at  the  front 
who  are  fighting  muddledly  enough  for  some  idea 
called  England — it's  some  faint  shadowing  of 
goodness  and  loveliness  they  have  in  their  hearts 
to  die  for." 

For  the  first  day  or  two  he  did  not  realise  that 
he  must  fight — one  of  his  ideas  was  to  go  to 
France  and  help  get  in  the  crops.  But  before  we 
had  been  at  Mar  a  week  he  was  back  in  London, 
seeking  out  the  best  way  to  serve  as  a  soldier. 
"I've  spent  a  fortnight,"  he  wrote  on  August 
24th,  "in  chasing  elusive  employment  about. 
For  a  time  I  got  drilled  on  the  chance  of  getting 
into  a  London  corps  as  a  private,  but  now  I  really 
think  I  shall  get  a  commission.  Territorial  prob- 
ably, through  Cambridge.  The  whole  thing,  and 
the  insupportable  stress  of  this  time,  tired  me  to  a 
useless  rag." 

Early  in  September  Winston  Churchill  offered 
him  a  commission  in  the  Royal  Naval  Division, 
then  forming;  and  he  and  Denis  Browne  ^  joined 

'  I  may  here  briefly  commemorate  William  Denis  Browne,  whose 
death  at  26  left  no  monument  of  his  powers,  except  a  few  songs 
of  great  beauty.  He  was  a  nnisician  of  rare  promise  and  complete 
equipment;  and  I  have  hiph  authority  for  saying  that  his  grasp  of 
the  foundations  and  tendencies  of  modern  niiisic  was  unitjue.  I 
cannot  here  describe  tlie  singular  charm  of  his  character  and  per- 
sonality.    Enough  that  he  never  failed  in  honour,  or  in  kindness, 


148  RUPERT  BROOKE 

the  Anson  Battalion  on  September  27th.  I  saw 
them  off  to  Betteshanger  Camp  from  Charing 
Cross — excited  and  a  little  shy,  like  two  new  boys 
going  to  school — happy  and  handsome  in  their 
new  uniforms,  and  specially  proud  of  their  caps, 
which  had  very  superior  badges. 

The  Anson  soon  went  to  Chatham  for  mus- 
ketry, and  there  he  wrote:  "Often  enough  I  feel 
a  passing  despair.  I  mean  what  you  meant — 
the  gulf  between  non-combatants  and  combat- 
ants. Yet  it's  not  that — it's  the  withdrawal  of 
combatants  into  a  special  seclusion  and  reserve. 
We're  under  a  curse — or  a  blessing,  or  a  vow  to 
be  different.  The  currents  of  our  lives  are  in- 
terrupted. What  is  it  .  .  .1  know — yes.  The 
central  purpose  of  my  life,  the  aim  and  end  of 
it  now,  the  thing  God  wants  of  ine,  is  to  get  good 
at  beating  Germans,  That's  sure.  But  that  isn't 
what  it  was.  What  it  was,  I  never  knew;  and 
God  knows  I  never  found  it.  But  it  reached  out 
deeply  for  other  things  than  my  present  need. 
.  .  .  There  is  the  absence.  Priests  and  crim- 
inals— we're  both — are  celibates  .    .    .  and  so  I 

or  in  good  sense,  or  in  humour;  and  there  were  many  who  loved 
him. 

He  was  a  friend  of  Rupert's  at  Rugby,  at  Cambridge,  and  in 
London;  last,  his  brother-in-arms;  and  he  cared  for  him,  as  will 
be  told,  in  his  morttd  illness.  Six  wciks  afterwards,  on  the  4th  of 
June,  he  followed  him,  fighting  with  high  gallantry  in  the  attack 
on  the  Turkish  trenches  before  Krithia. 


A  MEMOIR  149 

feel  from  my  end  sometimes  that  it  is  a  long,  long 
way  to  Tipperary.  And  yet,  all's  well.  I'm  the 
happiest  person  in  the  world." 

There  were  humours  in  the  life;  for  instance, 
a  false  alarm  of  invasion  at  Chatham,  when 
"elderly  men  rushed  about  pulling  down  swords 
from  the  messroom  walls,  and  fastened  them  on 
with  safety-pins";  or  this  incident  in  the  day's 
routine:  "I  had  to  make  an  inventory  the  other 
day  of  all  their  kit,  to  compare  with  what  they 
should  have.  I  soon  found  that  questions  about 
some  of  the  articles  on  the  lists  were  purely 
academic.  'How  many  handkerchiefs  have  you?' 
The  first  two  men  were  prompted  to  say  'none.* 
The  third  was  called  Cassidy.  'How  many 
phwat,  sorr?'  'Handkerchiefs.' — '?' — 'Handker- 
chiefs, man,  handkerchiefs.'  (In  a  hoarse  whis- 
per to  the  Petty  Officer)  'Phwat  does  he  mane?' 
P.O.  (in  a  stage  ivhisper),  'Ter  blow  yer  nose 
with,  yer  bloody  fool.'  Cassidy  (rather  indig- 
nant) y  'Xone,  sorr!'  They  were  dears,  and  very 
strong,  some  of  them." 

On  the  4th  of  October  they  sailed  for  Antwerp. 
When  it  was  all  over,  and  he  was  having  a  little 
leave  in  London,  he  wrote  to  a  friend:  "I've 
been  extremely  slack  and  sleepy  these  last  few 
days.  I  think  it  was  the  reaction  after  the  ex- 
citement.    Also   I   caught  conjun<:tivitiSj  alias 


150  RUPERT  BROOKE 

pink-eye,  in  some  of  the  foul  places  we  slept  in; 
and  my  eyes  have  been  swollen,  red,  unlovely, 
exuding  a  thick  plum-tree  gum,  and  very  pain- 
ful.   I /zo/;r  they're  getting  better It's 

only  a  fortnight  ago !  We  were  pulled  out  of  bed 
at  5  a.m.  on  the  Sunday,  and  told  that  we  started 
at  9.  We  marched  to  Dover,  highly  excited, 
only  knowing  that  we  were  bound  for  Dunkirk, 
and  supposing  that  we'd  stay  there  quietly,  train- 
ing, for  a  month.  Old  ladies  waved  handker- 
chiefs, young  ladies  gave  us  apples,  and  old  men 
and  children  cheered,  and  we  cheered  back,  and 
I  felt  very  elderly  and  sombre,  and  full  of 
thought  of  how  human  life  was  a  flash  between 
darknesses,  and  that  x  per  cent  of  those  who 
cheered  would  be  blown  into  another  world  within 
a  few  months;  and  they  all  seemed  to  me  so  in- 
nocent and  pathetic  and  noble,  and  my  eyes  grew 

round  and  tear-stained [Arrived  at 

Dunkirk]  we  sat  in  a  great  empty  shed  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  long,  waiting  for  orders.  After  dark  the 
senior  officers  rushed  round  and  informed  us  that 
we  were  going  to  Antwerp,  that  our  train  was 
sure  to  be  attacked,  and  that  if  we  got  through 
we'd  have  to  sit  in  trenches  till  we  were  wiped 
out.  So  we  all  sat  under  lights  writing  last  let- 
ters, a  very  tragic  and  amusing  affair.  It  did 
bring  home  to  me  how  very  futile  and  unfini-^hed 


A  MEMOIR  151 

my  life  was.  I  felt  so  an^ry.  I  had  to  imagine, 
supposing  I  tvas  killed.  There  was  nothing  ex- 
cept a  vague  gesture  of  good-bye  to  you  and  my 
mother  and  a  friend  or  two.  I  seemed  so  remote 
and  barren  and  stupid.  I  seemed  to  have  missed 
everything. 

"We  weren't  attacked  that  night  in  tlie  train. 
So  we  got  out  at  Antwerp  and  marched  through 
the  streets,  and  everyone  cheered  and  flung  them- 
selves on  us,  and  gave  us  apples  and  chocolate 
and  flags  and  kisses,  and  cried  Vivent  les  Anglais 
and  'Heep!  Heep!  Ileep!' 

"We  got  out  to  a  place  called  Vieux  Dieux 
(or  something  like  it)  passing  refugees  and  Bel- 
gian soldiers  by  millions.  Every  mile  the  noises 
got  louder,  immense  explosions  and  detonations. 
We  stopped  in  the  town  square  at  Vieux  Dieux ; 
five  or  six  thousand  British  troops,  a  lot  of  Bel- 
gians, guns  going  through,  transport-waggons, 
motorcyclists,  orderlies  on  horses,  stafl'  officers, 
and  the  rest.  An  extraordinary  and  thrilling 
confusion.  As  it  grew  dark  the  thunders  in- 
creased, and  the  sky  was  lit  by  extraordinary 
glares.  We  were  all  given  entrenching  tools. 
Everybody  looked  worried.  Suddenly  our  bat- 
talion was  marched  round  the  corner  out  of  the 
din,  through  an  old  gate  in  the  immense  wild  gar- 
den of  a  recently-deserted  villa-chateau.     There 


152  RUPERT  BROOKE 

we  had  to  sleep.  On  the  rather  dirty  and  wild- 
looking  sailors  trudged,  over  lawns,  through  or- 
chards, and  across  pleasaunces.  Little  pools 
glimmered  through  the  trees,  and  deserted  foun- 
tains; and  round  corners  one  saw,  faintly,  occa- 
sional Cupids  and  Venuses — a  scattered  company 
of  rather  bad  statues — gleaming  quietly.  The 
sailors  dug  their  latrines  in  the  various  rose-gar- 
dens, and  lay  down  to  sleep — but  it  was  bitter 
cold — under  the  shrubs.  By  two  the  shells  had 
got  unpleasantly  near,  and  some  message  came. 
So  up  we  got — frozen  and  sleepy — and  toiled  off 
through  the  night.  By  dawn  we  got  into  trenches 
— very  good  ones — and  relieved  Belgians. 

"This  is  very  dull.  And  it  doesn't  really  re- 
flect my  state  of  mind.  For  when  I  think  back 
on  it,  my  mind  is  filled  with  various  disconnected 
images  and  feelings.  And  if  I  could  tell  you 
these  fully,  you  might  find  it  wonderful,  or  at 
least  queer.  There's  the  excitement  in  the 
trenches  (we  weren't  attacked  seriously  in  our 
part)  with  people  losing  their  heads  and  fussing 
and  snapping.  It's  queer  to  see  the  people  who 
do  break  under  the  strain  of  danger  and  respon- 
sibility. It's  always  the  rotten  ones.  Highly 
sensitive  people  don't,  queerly  enough.  I  was 
relieved  to  find  I  was  incredibly  brave!  I  don't 
know  how  I   should  behave   if  shrapnel  were 


A  MEMOIR  153 

bursting  over  me  and  knocking  the  men  round 
me  to  pieces.  But  for  risks  and  nerves  and  fa- 
tigues I  was  all  right.    Tliat's  cheering. 

"And  there's  the  empty  blue  sky  and  the 
peaceful  village  and  country  scenery,  and  noth- 
ing of  war  to  see  except  occasional  bursts  of  white 
smoke,  very  lazy  and  quiet,  in  the  distance.  But 
to  hear — incessant  thunder,  shaking  buildings 
and  ground,  and  you  and  everything;  and  above, 
recurrent  wailings,  very  thin  and  queer,  like  lost 
souls,  crossing  and  recrossing  in  the  emptiness — 
nothing  to  be  seen.  Once  or  twice  a  lovely  ght- 
tering  aeroplane,  very  high  up,  would  go  over 
us;  and  then  the  shrapnel  would  be  turned  on  it, 
and  a  dozen  quiet  little  curls  of  white  smoke 
would  appear  round  the  creature — the  whole 
thing  like  a  German  woodcut,  very  quaint  and 
peaceful  and  unreal. 

"But  the  retreat  drowned  all  these  impressions. 
We  stole  away  from  the  trenches,  across  half 
Antwerp,  over  the  Scheldt,  and  finally  entrained 
in  the  last  train  left,  at  7.30  next  morning.  The 
march  through  those  deserted  suburbs,  mile  on 
mile,  with  never  a  living  being,  except  our  rather 
ferocious-looking  sailors  stealing  sulkily  along. 
The  sky  was  lit  by  burning  villages  and  houses; 
and  after  a  bit  we  got  to  the  land  by  the  river, 
where  the  Belgians  had  let  all  the  petrol  out  of 


154  RUPERT  BROOKE 

the  tanks  and  fired  it.  Rivers  and  seas  of  flames 
leaping  up  hundreds  of  feet,  crowned  by  black 
smoke  that  covered  the  entire  heavens.  It  lit  up 
houses  wrecked  by  shells,  dead  horses,  demol- 
ished railway-stations,  engines  that  had  been 
taken  up  with  their  lines  and  signals,  and  all 
twisted  round  and  pulled  out,  as  a  bad  child  spoils 

a  toy The  glare  was  like  hell.     We 

passed  on,  out  of  that,  across  a  pontoon  bridge 
))uilt  on  boats.  Two  German  spies  tried  to  blow 
it  up  while  we  were  on  it.  They  were  caught  and 
shot.  We  went  on  through  the  dark.  The  refu- 
gees and  motor-buses  and  transport  and  Belgian 
troops  grew  thicker.  After  about  a  thousand 
years  it  was  dawn.  The  motor-buses  indicated 
that  we  were  bound  for  Hammersmith,  and 
might  be  allowed  to  see  Potash  and  Fcrlmutter." 
Another  letter,  written  on  Christmas  Day  to 
Russell  Loines  of  New  York,  perhaps  his  great- 
est friend  among  his  kind  American  hosts,  shows 
how  deeply  the  sight  of  the  refugees  had  moved 
him.  "I  started  a  long  letter  to  you  in  August 
and  September,  in  my  scraps  of  time;  a  valuable 
letter,  full  of  information  about  the  war  and  the 
state  of  mind  of  pacifists  and  others.  The  Ger- 
mans have  it  now.  It  went  in  my  luggage  to 
Antwerp,  and  there  was  left.  Whether  it  was 
burnt  or  captured,  I  can't  be  sure.     But  it  was 


A  MEMOIR  155 

in  a  tin  box,  with — damn  it! — a  lot  of  my  manu- 
script.    And  it  was  fairly  heavily  shelled. 

"I  don't  know  if  you  heard  of  my  trip  to  Ant- 
werp. A  queer  picnic.  They  say  we  saved  the 
Belgian  army,  and  most  of  the  valuable  things 
in  the  town — stores  and  ammunition,  I  mean. 
With  luck,  we  might  have  kept  the  line  fifty  miles 
forward  of  where  it  is.  However,  we  at  last  got 
away — most  of  us.  It  really  was  a  very  mild 
experience;  except  the  thirty  miles  march  out 
through  the  night  and  tlie  blazing  city.  Antwerp 
that  night  was  like  several  different  kinds  of  hell 
— the  broken  houses  and  dead  horses  lit  up  by 
an  infernal  glare.  The  refugees  were  the  worst 
sight.  The  German  policy  of  frightfulness  had 
succeeded  so  well,  that  out  of  that  city  of  half  a 
million,  when  it  was  decided  to  surrender  Ant- 
werp, not  ten  thousand  would  stay.  They  put 
their  goods  on  carts,  barrows,  perambulators, 
anything.  Often  the  carts  had  no  horses,  and 
they  just  stayed  there  in  the  street,  waiting  for  a 
miracle.  There  were  all  the  country  refugees, 
too,  from  the  villages,  who  had  been  coming 
through  our  lines  all  day  and  half  the  night.  I'll 
never  forget  that  white-faced,  endless  procession 
in  the  night,  pressed  aside  to  let  the  military — 
us — pass,  crawling  forward  at  some  hundred 
yards  an  hour,  quite  hopeless,  the  old  men  cry- 


156  RUPERT  BROOKE 

ing,  and  the  women  with  hard  drawn  faces.  ^Vhat 
a  crime! — and  I  gather  they've  announced  their 
intention  of  keeping  Belgium  if  they  can. 

"England  is  remarkable.  I  wish  I  had  the 
time  to  describe  it.  But  this  job  keeps  one  so 
darned  tired,  and  so  stupid,  that  I  haven't  the 
Avords.  There  are  a  few  people  who've  been  so 
anti-war  before,  or  so  suspicious  of  diplomacy, 
that  they  feel  rather  out  of  the  national  feeling. 
But  it's  astonishing  to  see  how  the  'intellectuals' 
have  taken  on  new  jobs.  No,  not  astonishing; 
but  impressive.  Masefield  drills  hard  in  Hamp- 
stead,  and  told  me,  with  some  pride,  a  month  ago, 
that  he  was  a  Corporal,  and  thought  he  was  going 
to  be  promoted  to  Sergeant  soon.  Cornford  is 
no  longer  the  best  Greek  scholar  in  Cambridge. 
He  recalled  that  he  was  a  very  good  shot  in  his 
youth,  and  is  now  a  Sergeant-Instructor  of  JNIus- 
ketry.  I'm  here.  INIy  brother  is  a  2nd  Lieuten- 
ant in  the  Post  Office  Rifles.  He  was  one  of 
three  great  friends  at  King's.  The  second  is  In- 
telligence Officer  in  H.jM.S.  Vengeance,  Chan- 
nel Patrol.  The  third  is  buried  near  Cambrai. 
Gilbert  ^Murray  and  Walter  Raleigh  rise  at  six 
every  day  to  line  hedgerows  in  the  dark,  and 
'advance  in  rushes'  across  the  Oxford  meadows. 

"Among  the   other  officers   in  this  Division 


A  MEMOIR  157 

whom  I  know  are  two  young  Asquiths ;  ^  an  Aus- 
tralian professional  pianist "  who  twice  won  the 
Diamond  Sculls;  a  New  Zealander  ^  who  was 
fighting  in  Mexico  and  walked  300  miles  to  the 
coast  to  get  a  boat  when  he  heard  of  the  War;  a 
friend  of  mine,  Denis  Browne — Cambridge — 
who  is  one  of  the  best  young  English  musicians 
and  an  extremely  brilliant  critic;  a  youth  lately 
through  Eton  and  Balliol,*  who  is  the  most  bril- 
liant man  they've  had  in  Oxford  for  ten  years; 
a  young  and  very  charming  American  called 
John  Bigelow  Dodge,  who  turned  up  to  'fight  for 
the  right' — I  could  extend  the  hst.  It's  all  a  ter- 
rible tragedy.  And  yet,  in  its  details,  it's  great 
fun.  And — apart  from  the  tragedy — I've  never 
felt  happier  or  better  in  my  life  than  in  those  days 
in  Belgium.  And  now  I've  the  feeling  of  anger 
at  a  seen  wrong — Belgium — to  make  me  happier 
and  more  resolved  in  my  work.  I  know  that 
whatever  happens,  I'll  be  doing  some  good,  fight- 
ing to  prevent  that." 

"I  hope  to  get  through,"  he  wrote  about  the 
same  time  to  Mrs.  Arnold  Toynbee.  "I'll  have 
such  a  lot  to  say  and  do  afterwards.    Just  now 

*  Brigadier-General    Arthur    Asquith,    D.S.O.,    and    his    brother 
Herbert. 

*  F.  S.  Kelly,  killed  in  action. 

*  Bripadicr-Gcneral   Bernard   Freybcrg,  V.C.,  D.S.O. 

*  Patrick  Shaw-Stcwart,  killed  in  action. 


158  RUPERT  BROOKE 

I'm  rather  miserable,  because  most  of  my  school- 
friends  are  wounded,  or  'wounded  and  missing,' 
or  dead.  Perhaps  our  sons  will  live  the  better 
for  it  all.  I  knew  of  yours,  I  was  very  glad.  It 
must  be  good  to  have  a  son.  When  they  told  us 
at  Dunkirk  tliat  wc  were  all  going  to  be  killed 
in  Antwerp,  if  not  on  the  way  there,  I  didn't 
think  much  (as  I'd  expected)  what  a  damned 
fool  I  was  not  to  have  written  more,  and  done 
various  things  better,  and  been  less  selfish.  I 
merely  thought  'what  Hell  it  is  that  I  shan't  have 
any  children — any  sons.'  I  thought  it  over  and 
over,  quite  furious,  for  some  hours.  And  we  were 
barely  even  under  fire,  in  the  end!" 

"There's  a  lot  to  talk  about,"  he  told  Jacques 
Raverat,  "though  I'm  rather  beyond  talking. 
Yes,  we  are  insular.  Did  you  hear  of  the  British 
private  who  had  been  through  the  fighting  from 
JNIons  to  Ypres,  and  was  asked  what  he  thought 
of  all  his  experiences?    He  said,  'What  I  don't 

like  about  this  'ere  h Europe  is  all  these 

b pictures  of  Jesus  Christ  and  His  relations, 

behind  b bits  of  glawss.'  ^     It  seems  to  me 

to  express  perfectly  that  insularity  and  cheerful 
atheism  which  are  the  chief  characteristics  of  my 
race. 

'  lliis  was  a  story  of  Julian  Grenfell's  about  one  of  his  men, 
which  I  liad  passed  on  to  Rupert. 


A  MEMOIR  159 

"All  the  same,  though  myself  cheerful,  insu- 
lar, and  an  atheist,  I'm  largely  dissatisfied  with 
the  English,  just  now.  The  good  ones  are  all 
right.  And  it's  curiously  far  away  from  us  (if 
we  haven't  the  Belgians  in  memory  as  I  have). 
But  there's  a  ghastly  sort  of  apathy  over  half 
the  country.  And  I  really  think  large  num- 
bers of  male  people  don't  want  to  die.  Which 
is  odd.  I've  been  praying  for  a  German 
raid 

"]My  mind's  gone  stupid  with  drill  and  arrang- 
ing about  the  men's  food.  It's  all  good  fun.  I'm 
rather  happy.  I've  a  restful  feeling  that  all's 
going  well  and  I'm  not  harming  anyone,  and 
probably  even  doing  good.  A  queer  new  feeling. 
The  only  horror  is  that  I  want  to  marry  in  a 

hurry  and  get  a  child,  before  I  vanish 

There's  the  question:  to  ponder  in  my  sleeping- 
bag,  between  the  thoughts  on  the  attack  and  cal- 
culations about  the  boots  of  the  platoon.  In- 
soluble: and  the  weeks  slip  on.  It'll  end  in  my 
muddling  that,  as  I've  muddled  everything  else." 

After  they  got  back  from  Antwerp,  there  was 
a  tiresome  period  of  re-shuffling  among  the  dif- 
ferent battalions;  but  by  the  middle  of  Decem- 
ber, Rupert,  Denis  Browne,  Arthur  Asquith, 
Patrick  Shaw-Stewart,  Bernard  Freyberg  and 
the  rest  were  reunited  at  Blandford  Camp  in  the 


IGO  RUPERT  BROOKE 

'Hood,'  where  there  were  other  officers  who  were 
either  friends  ah'eady  or  belonged  to  contermin- 
ous sets;  so  that  a  pleasant  family  part  was  soon 
established.  The  life  was  strenuous,  but  not 
eventful.  "I  spend  Christmas,"  ^  he  wrote,  "in 
lookinf]^  after  drunken  stokers.  One  of  them  has 
been  drunk  since  7  a.m.;  he  neither  eats  nor 
drinks,  but  dances  a  complicated  step  up  and 
down  his  hut,  singing  'How  happy  I  am,  how 
happy  I  am' — a  short,  fat,  inelegant  man,  in 
stockinged  feet.  What  wonders  we  are!  There's 
no  news — occasional  scares.  On  Wednesday  I 
(don't  tell  a  soul)  started  a  sormet.  What  a  fall!" 
The  five  sonnets  called  '1914'  had  been  coming 
for  some  time,  and  were  finished  at  Rugby  when 
he  went  there  for  a  few  days'  leave  just  after 
Christmas.  "These  proofs  have  come,"  he  wrote 
from  Canford  Manor  on  January  24th.  "JNIy 
muse,  panting  all  autumn  under  halberd  and 
cuirass,  could  but  falter  these  syllables  through 
her  vizor.  God,  they're  in  the  rough,  these  five 
camp-children — 4  and  5  are  good  though,  and 
there  are  phrases  in  the  rest.^ 

*  He  had  telegraphed  just  before,  to  a  trusty  friend,  "Send 
mincc-pies   for  sixty  men  and  a  few  cakes  immediately." 

'"I  think  reading  in  war-time  right  enough,"  he  wrote  to  Miss 
Pyc  from  the  Mediterranean.  "But  writing  /equires  a  longer 
period  of  serenity,  a  more  certainly  undisturl>ed  subconsciousness. 
If  the  S.C.'s  turbulent,  one's  draught  from  it  is  opaque.  Witness 
the  first  three  sonnets." 


A  MEMOIR  161 

"Last  night  I  slept  between  sheets,  and  this 
morning  I  lay  an  hour  in  a  hot  bath,  and  so  was 
late  for  a  breakfast  of  pheasant  and  sausages  and 
the  divinest  coffee.  Now  I  sit  over  a  great  fire 
of  wood  in  the  hall  of  a  house  built  by  Vanbrugh, 
with  a  Scuola  di  Bellini  above  me,  smoking  and 
reading  and  writing. 

"I've  been  peacefully  reading  up  the  country- 
side all  the  morning.  Where  our  huts  are  w^as 
an  Iberian  fort  against  the  Celts — and  Celtish 
against  Romans — and  Roman  against  Saxons. 
.  .  .  Just  over  the  hills  is  that  tower  where  a 
young  Astronomer  watched  the  stars,  and  a  Lady 
watched  the  Astronomer.^  By  Tarrant  Ilinton, 
two  miles  Xorth,  George  Bubb  Dodington  lived 
and  reigned  and  had  his  salon.  In  Tarrant 
Crawford,  two  miles  South,  a  Queen  lies  buried. 
Last  week  we  attacked  some  of  the  New  Army 
in  Banbury  Rings — an  ancient  fort  where  Arthur 
defeated  the  Saxons  in — what  year?  Where  I 
lay  on  my  belly  cursing  the  stokers  for  their 
slowness,  Guinevere  sat,  and  wondered  if  she'd 
see  Arthur  and  Lancelot  return  from  the  fight, 
or  both,  or  neither,  and  pictured  how  they'd  look ; 
and  then  fell  a- wondering  which,  if  it  came  to  the 
point,  she'd  prefer  to  see." 

"The  world's  going  well,"  he  wrote  at  this  time 

'  See  Thomas  Hardy's  Two  on  a  Tower. 


1G2  RUPERT  BROOKE 

to  Jacques  Raverat:  "better  than  it  did  when  we 
were  younger.  And  a  Frenelinian  is  the  one  per- 
son in  the  world  with  something  to  be  proud  of, 
these  days." 

VII 

On  January  29th  he  came  to  London  to  re- 
cover from  a  rather  bad  attack  of  influenza,  stay- 
ing first  at  Gray's  Inn  and  then  at  10  Downing 
Street.  I  saw  him  for  the  last  time  on  February 
25th,  when  the  King  reviewed  the  Naval  Divi- 
sion at  Blandford  before  their  departure  for  the 
Dardanelles.  The  secret  of  where  they  were  go- 
ing was  just  out,  and  everj'one  was  wild  with 
excitement  and  joy.  "It's  too  wonderful  for  be- 
lief," he  wrote  to  INIiss  Asquith.  "I  had  not 
imagined  Fate  could  be  so  benign.  I  almost  sus- 
pect her.  Perhaps  we  shall  be  held  in  reserve, 
out  of  sight,  on  a  choppy  sea,  for  two  months. 
.  .  .  Yet  even  that!  .  .  .  But  I'm  filled  with 
confident  and  glorious  hopes.  I've  been  looking 
at  the  maps.  Do  you  think  perhaps  the  fort  on 
the  Asiatic  corner  will  want  quelling,  and  we'll 
land  and  come  at  it  from  behind,  and  they'll  make 
a  sortie  and  meet  us  on  the  plains  of  Troy?  It 
seems  to  me  strategically  so  possible.  Shall  we 
have  a  Hospital  Base   (and  won't  you  manage 


A  MEMOIR  163 

it?)  on  Lesbos?  Will  Hero's  Tower  crumble 
under  the  15"  guns?  Will  the  sea  be  polyphlois- 
bic  and  wine-dark  and  iinvintageable?  Shall  I 
loot  mosaics  from  St.  Sophia,  and  Turkish  De- 
light, and  carpets?  Should  we  be  a  Turning 
Point  in  History?    Oh  God! 

"I've  never  been  quite  so  happy  in  my  life,  I 
think.  Not  quite  so  pervasively  happy;  like  a 
stream  flowing  entirely  to  one  end.  I  suddenly 
realise  that  the  ambition  of  my  life  has  been — 
since  I  was  two — to  go  on  a  military  expedition 
against  Constantinople.  And  when  I  thought  I 
was  hungry  or  sleepy  or  aching  to  write  a  poem 
— that  was  what  I  really,  blindly,  wanted.  This 
is  nonsense.  Good-night.  I'm  very  tired  with 
equipping  my  platoon." 

They  sailed  from  Avonmouth  in  the  Grantully 
Castle  on  February  28th.  "Four  days  out,"  he 
dated  his  next  letter  to  Miss  Asquith.  "All  day 
we've  been  just  out  of  sight  of  land,  thirty  or 
forty  miles  away — out  of  sight,  but  in  smell. 
There  was  something  earthy  in  the  air,  and  warm 
— like  the  consciousness  of  a  presence  in  the  dark 
— the  wind  had  something  Andalusian  in  it.  It 
wasn't  that  wall  of  scent  and  invisible  blossom 
and  essential  spring  that  knocks  you  flat,  quite 
suddenly,  as  you've  come  round  some  unseen  cor- 
ner in  the  atmosphere,  fifty  miles  out  from  a 


164  RUPERT  BROOKE 

South  Sea  Island;  but  it  teas  the  good  smell  of 
land — and  of  Spain,  too!  And  Spain  I've  never 
seen,  and  never  shall  see,  may  be.  x\ll  day  I  sat 
and  strained  my  eyes  to  see  over  the  horizon 
orange-groves  and  Moorish  buildings,  and  dark- 
eyed  beauties  and  guitars,  and  fountains,  and  a 
golden  darkness.  But  the  curve  of  the  world  lay 
between  us.  Do  you  know  Jan  [MasefieldJ's 
favourite  story — told  very  melodiously  with 
deep-voice  reverence — about  Columbus?  Co- 
lumbus wrote  a  diary  (which  Jan  reads)  and  de- 
scribed the  coast  of  America  as  he  found  it — the 
divinest  place  in  the  world.  'It  was  only  like 
the  Paradise  of  the  Saints  of  God' — and  then  he 
remembered  that  there  was  one  place  equal  to  it, 
the  place  where  he  was  born — and  goes  on  'or 
like  the  gardens  of  Andalusia  in  the  spring.'  " 

He  wrote  to  me  from  'North  of  Tunis'  on 
March  7th.  "It  seems  ages  ago  since  we  said 
good-bye  to  you  on  our  mottled  parade-ground. 
We've  had  rather  a  nice  voyage;  a  bit  unsteady 
the  first  day  (when  I  was  sick)  and  to-day;  other- 
wise very  smooth  and  delicious.  There  has  been 
a  little,  not  much,  to  do.  I've  read  most  of 
Turkey  in  Europe.  But  what  with  parades  and 
the  reading  of  military  books,  I've  not  WTitten 
anything.  Anyway,  my  mind's  always  a  blank 
at  sea. 


A  MEMOIR  165 

"For  two  days  we've  been  crawling  along  the 
African  Coast,  observing  vast  tawny  mountains, 
with  white  villages  on  this  side  of  them  and  white 
peaks  beyond.  The  sea  has  been  a  jewel,  and 
sunset  and  dawn  divine  blazes  of  colour.  It's  all 
too  ridiculously  peaceful  for  one  to  believe  any- 
thing but  that  we're  a — rather  odd — lot  of  tour- 
ists, seeing  the  ^lediterranean  and  bent  on  en- 
jojTuent.  War  seems  infinitely  remote;  and 
even  the  reason,  foreseeing  Gallipoli,  yet  admits 
that  there  are  many  blue  days  to  come,  and  the 
Cyclades 

"I  can  well  see  that  life  might  be  great  fun; 
and  I  can  well  see  death  might  be  an  admirable 
solution 

"In  a  fortnight,  the  quarter  million  Turks." 

I  think  these  words  on  the  prospect  of  living  or 
dying  represent  his  normal  state  of  mind;  and 
that  he  had  nothing  which  could  justly  be  called 
a  prescntivient  of  death.  "This  is  very  odd,"  was 
the  beginning  of  a  letter  which  he  wrote  for  me  in 
case  he  died.  "But  I  suppose  I  must  imagine 
my  non-existence,  and  make  a  few  arrange- 
ments." He  certainly  spoke  to  some  people  as 
though  he  were  sure  of  not  coming  back ;  but  no 
one  can  read  the  letters  I  have  printed  without 
seeing  what  a  creature  of  moods  he  was;  and  it 
was   always   his   way   to   dramatise   the   future. 


166  RUPERT  BROOKE 

There  was  a  vivid  realisation  of  the  possibility 
— I  believe  that  was  all/ 

He  spoke  in  the  letter  I  have  just  quoted  of  a 
wish  he  had  expressed  to  his  mother  (whieh  she 
has  carried  out) ,  that  any  money  he  left,  and  any 
profits  from  his  books,  should  be  divided  between 
three  of  his  brother  poets.  "If  I  can  set  them 
free  to  any  extent,"  he  told  her,  "to  write  the 
poetry  and  plays  and  books  they  want  to,  my 
death  will  bring  more  gain  than  loss."  The  three 
were  Lascelles  Abercrombie,  Walter  de  la  Mare, 
and  Wilfrid  Gibson." 

*  Tlie  preoccupation  with  the  idea  of  death,  shown  in  his  poems 
from  tiic  first,  has  often  In-en  noticed.  When  I  looked  through 
his  copj'  of  Aristophanes,  I  was  strucli  i)v  a  heavy  triple  mark 
which  he  had  put  against  two  lines  of  the  Frogs — almost  the  only 
passage  he  hud  marked  at  all: 

TtOvr)K6<nv  ykp  tKtytv  ,  S)  fioxOripk  ai, 
oh  oiibk  rpU  \iyovT(S  i^iKPoVfxtOa. 

"Aye,  but  he's  speaking  to  tlie  dead,  you  knave. 
Who  cannot  hear  us  though  we  call  them  thrice." 

(B.   B.   Rogers'  translation.) 

This  may  have  suggested  the  phrase  about  the  'unanswering  dead' 
in  Amharval'ui,  which  occurs  again  in  a  fragment,  prol)ably  written 
in  1914:— 

"We  have  told  you  the  last  lies,  unanswering  Dead. 
Farewell,  we  have  said. 
Knowing  the  Dead  fare  neither  ill  nor  well." 

'  Mrs.  Brooke  included  in  this  bequest  the  amount  of  the  How- 
land  Memorial  Prize,  the  first  award  of  which  was  unanimously 
made  to  her  son  in  1916,  after  his  death,  liy  the  Committee  of  the 
Corporation  of  Yale  University.  Tlic  prize  is  given  "in  recognition 
of  some  achievement  of  marked  distinction  in  the  field  of  literature 
or  fine  arts  or  the  science  of  government;  and  an  important  factor 
in  the  selection  is  the  idealistic  element  in  the  recipient's  work." 

Mr.    Charles    Howland   wrote   to   Mrs.    Brooke   announcing   the 


A  MEMOIR  167 

"We  had  a  very  amusing  evening  in  Malta," 
he  wrote  to  his  mother  on  March  12th.  "Our 
boat  got  in  one  afternoon  ahiiost  last  of  the  lot. 
We  were  allowed  ashore  from  5  to  midnight. 
Oc,^  Denis  and  I  drove  around  in  a  funny  little 
carriage,  and  looked  at  the  views.  It's  a  very 
lovely  place;  very  like  Verona  or  any  Italian 
town,  but  rather  cleaner  and  more  Southern. 
There  was  a  lovely  iSlediterranean  sunset  and 
evening,  and  the  sky  and  sea  were  filled  with 
colours.  The  odd  and  pleasant  thing  was  the 
way  we  kept  running  into  people  we  knew  and 
hadn't  expected  to  meet.  First  there  were  peo- 
ple in  all  the  other  battalions,  who  had  come  on 
by  other  boats.  Then  we  found  'Cardy'  [Lionel] 
Montagu,  E.S.M.'s  brother,  staring  at  the  Cathe- 
dral. Then  Cherry,  who  used  to  be  in  the  Anson 
with  us,  a  nice  chap,  and  he  dined  with  us;  and 
in,  at  the  end  of  dinner,  came  Patrick  Shaw- 
Stewart  (of  this  Battalion)  with  Charles  Lister, 
who  was  dragged  in  absolutely  at  the  last  mo- 
award:  "You  must  have  known  already  by  many  avenues  of  the 
feeling  about  him  in  the  United  States — of  the  sense  of  tenderness 
for  his  youtli,  of  the  Jittitude  of  possession  of  him  jointly  with 
Englishmen  as  one  of  the  Masters  of  Song  in  our  common  tongue; 
and  indeed  that  he  typifies  the  nobility  of  sacrifice  for  a  cause  ithat 
is  ours   i\s  well   as  yours." 

'J'he  lecture,  which  by  the  terms  of  the  gift  was  due  from  the 
prizewinner,  was  delivered  at  Yale  by  Walter  de  la  Mare  in  his 
stead. 

'  Arthur  As(]uith. 


168  RUPERT  BROOKE 

merit  because  he  is  supposed  to  know  Turkish, 
and  is  with  the  Divisional  Staff.  Before  dinner, 
as  I  was  buying  buttons  in  a  little  shop,  in  walked 
George  Peel !  And  after  dinner,  at  a  nice  little 
opera,  everyone  I  knew  seemed  to  appear,  in 
khaki,  all  very  cheerful  and  gay.  Lots  of  peo- 
ple w^ho  we  thought  were  going  to  be  left  behind 
had  been  able  to  get  out  at  the  last  moment,  and 
pounced  on  us  from  behind  boxes  or  out  of 
stalls.  The  Maltese  elite  who  were  there  must 
have  been  puzzled  at  the  noise." 

From  Malta  they  went  on  to  Lemnos;  "the 
loveliest  place  in  the  evening  sun,"  he  wrote, 
"softly  white,  grey,  silver-white  buildings,  some 
very  old,  some  new,  round  a  great  harbour — all 
very  Southern;  like  an  Italian  town  in  silver- 
point,  livable  and  serene,  with  a  sea  and  sky  of 
opal  and  pearl  and  faint  gold  around.  It  was 
nearer  than  any  place  I've  ever  seen  to  what  a 
Greek  must  have  witnessed  when  he  sailed  into 
a  Greek  coast-city." 

Here  there  was  an  alarum,  but  not  an  excur- 
sion, as  appears  from  a  letter  to  Miss  Cox,  dated 
"Somewhere  (some  way  from  the  front)  March 
19th."  "The  other  day  we — some  of  us — were 
told  that  we  sailed  next  day  to  make  a  landing. 
A  few  thousand  of  us.  Off  we  stole  that  night 
through  the  phosphorescent  Aegean,  scribbling 


A  MEMOIR  169 

farewell  letters,  and  snatching  periods  of  excited 
dream-broken  sleep.  At  four  we  rose,  buckled 
on  our  panoply,  hung  ourselves  with  glasses, 
compasses,  periscopes,  revolvers,  food,  and  the 
rest,  and  had  a  stealthy  large  breakfast.  That 
was  a  mistake.  It's  ruinous  to  load  up  one's  belly 
four  or  five  hours  before  it  expects  it — it  throws 
the  machinery  out  of  gear  for  a  week.  I  felt  ex- 
tremely ill  the  rest  of  that  day. 

"We  paraded  in  silence  under  paling  stars 
along  the  sides  of  the  ship.  The  darkness  on  the 
sea  was  full  of  scattered  flashing  lights,  hinting 
at  our  fellow-transports  and  the  rest.  Slowly 
the  sky  became  warm  and  green,  and  the  sea 
opal.  Everyone's  face  looked  drawn  and  ghastly. 
If  we  landed,  my  company  was  to  be  the  first 
to  land.  .  .  .  We  made  out  that  we  were  only 
a  mile  or  two  from  a  dim  shore.  I  was  seized 
with  an  agony  of  remorse  that  I  hadn't  taught 
my  platoon  a  thousand  things  more  energetically 
and  competently.  The  light  grew.  The  shore 
looked  to  be  crammed  with  Fate,  and  was  omi- 
nously silent.  One  man  thought  he  saw  a  camel 
through  his  glasses.  .  .  . 

"There  were  some  hours  of  silence. 

"About  seven,  someone  said,  'We're  going 
home.'  We  dismissed  the  stokers,  who  said, 
quietly,  'When's  the  next  battle?',  and  disem- 


170  RUPERT  BROOKE 

panoplied,  and  had  another  breakfast.  If  we 
were  a  'feint,'  or  if  it  was  too  roiigli  to  land,  or 
in  general,  what  little  part  we  blindly  played, 
we  never  knew,  and  shall  not.  Still,  we  did  our 
bit,  not  ignobly,  I  trust.  We  did  not  see  the 
enemy.  We  did  not  fire  at  them;  nor  they  at  us. 
It  seemed  improbable  they  saw  us.  One  of  B 
Company — she  was  rolling  very  slightly — was 
sick  on  parade.  Otherwise,  no  casualties.  A 
notable  battle. 

"Later.  We're  off  to  Eg^-pt:  for  repose.  For 
— I  imagine — a  month  at  least.  What  a  life  I 
Another  campaign  over!'* 

On  March  27th  they  arrived  at  Port  Said,  and 
he  went  for  three  days'  leave  with  Arthur  Asquith 
and  Patrick  Shaw- Stewart  to  Cairo,  where  they 
saw  the  Sphinx  and  the  Pyramids,  rode  about  on 
camels,  and  bought  things  in  the  bazaars. 

Sir  Ian  Hamilton  came  to  Port  Said  to  review 
the  Naval  Division  on  April  3rd,  and  offered  him 
a  post  on  his  staff.  "I  saw  Rupert  Brooke,"  he 
wrote  to  me,  "lying  down  under  a  shelter,  rather 
off  colour,  poor  boy.  He  had  got  a  touch  of  the 
sun  the  previous  day.  It  was  nothing,  and  es- 
sentially he  was  looking  in  first-class  physical 
condition.  He  very  naturally  would  like  to  see 
this  first  adventure  through  with  his  own  men; 


'A  MEMOIR  171 

after  that  I  think  he  would  like  to  come  to  me. 
It  was  very  natural,  and  I  quite  understand  it — 
I  should  have  answered  the  same  in  his  case  had 
I  been  offered  a  staff  billet."  Rupert  never 
mentioned  this  offer  to  his  brother-officers.  "The 
first  day  I  was  sick,"  he  wrote  to  his  mother, 
"before  I  got  out  of  camp — was  the  day  when 
our  new  G.O.C.-in-Chief — you'll  know  who  that 
is — reviewed  us.  I'd  met  him  once  or  twice  in 
London.  He  came  to  see  me  after  the  review 
and  talked  for  a  bit.  He  offered  me  a  sort  of 
galloper-aide-de-camp  job  on  his  staff:  but  I 
shan't  take  it.  Anyhow,  not  now,  not  till  this 
present  job's  over;  afterwards,  if  I've  had  enough 
of  the  regimental  officer's  work,  I  might  like  it." 
"But  it's  really  so  jolly,"  he  wrote  to  me  on  the 
same  occasion,  "being  with  Oc  and  Denis  and 
Charles  [Lister]  and  Patrick  and  Kelly,  that  it'd 
have  to  be  very  tempting  company  to  persuade 
me  to  give  it  up." 

That  evening  he  joined  Patrick  Shaw-Stewart, 
who  had  the  same  illness,  at  the  Casino  Hotel. 
"Then  began  nearly  a  week  of  comic  alternations 
and  vicissitudes  in  our  himiiliating  complaint," 
Shaw-Stewart  wrote  to  me.  "The  companion- 
ship in  our  two  little  beds  was  very  close,  but 
limited  by  our  mental  state,  which  owing  to  star- 
vation was — for  me — complete  vacuity.     So  we 


172  RUPERT  BROOKE 

just  lay  opposite  and  grew  our  little  beards,  mine 
red,  his  golden  brown,  and  made  our  little  jokes 
at  one  another — very  good  ones,  I  can't  help 
thinking.  Altogether,  if  it  hadn't  been  for  the 
starvation  and  the  uncomfortable  beds  and  the 
terrible  difficulty  of  making  the  Italian  waiter 
understand  (R.  did  better  with  gesticulatory 
English  than  I  with  Italian,  which  made  me  furi- 
ous) it  was  the  best  period  of  the  war  for  me. 
We  were  turned  out  rather  quickly.  On  the  Fri- 
day morning,  April  9th,  we  were  ordered  to  be 
aboard  that  evening  if  we  were  well  enough, 
which  of  course  we  both  said  we  were.  In  my 
case  there  was  no  doubt  I  was:  in  R.'s  I  think  it 
was  doubtful,  and  Colonel  Quilter  rather  urged 
him  to  stay  behind  if  he  still  felt  queer,  but  of 
course  it  would  have  been  a  difficult  thing  (mor- 
ally) to  do.  So  we  both  went  on  board  and  stuck 
to  our  cabins  for  a  day  or  two,  R.  emerging  later 
than  me.  Just  at  this  time  he  seemed  really 
pretty  well  (as  well  as  at  Blandford,  which  I 
think  for  him  probably  wasn't  so  very  well)  but 
a  little  listless." 

Rupert  himself  wrote  to  INIiss  Asquith  the  day 
he  left  the  hotel,  "Anyhow  here  I  am,  well  up  on 
that  difficult  slope  that  leads  from  arrowroot, 
past  chicken  broth,  by  rice  puddings,  to  eggs  in 


A  MEMOIR  173 

milk,  and  so  to  eggs,  and  boiled  fish,  and  finally 
(they  say)  chicken  and  fruit  and  even  real  meat. 
But  that  is  still  beyond  the  next  crest.  On!  on! 
But  while  I  shall  be  well,  I  think,  for  our  first 
thrust  into  the  fray,  I  shall  be  able  to  give  my 
Turk,  at  the  utmost,  a  kitten's  tap.  A  diet  of 
arrowroot  doesn't  build  up  violence.  I  am  as 
weak  as  a  pacifist." 

About  the  same  time  he  wrote  to  Lascelles 
Abercrombie:  "The  Sun-God  (he,  the  Song- 
God)  distinguished  one  of  his  most  dangerous 
rivals  since  Marsyas  among  the  x  thousand 
tanned  and  dirty  men  blown  suddenly  on  these 
his  special  coasts  a  few  days  or  weeks  ago.  He 
unslung  his  bow.  ...  I  lie  in  an  hotel,  cool  at 
length,  with  wet  cloths  on  my  head  and  less  than 
nothing  in  my  belly.  Sunstroke  is  a  bloody  af- 
fair. It  breaks  very  suddenly  the  fair  harmonies 
of  the  body  and  the  soul.  I'm  lying  recovering 
from  it,  living  faintly  on  arrowroot  and  rice-pud- 
dings and  milk;  passing  from  dream  to  dream, 
all  faint  and  tasteless  and  pure  as  arrowroot  it- 
self. I  shall  be  all  right  in  time  for  the  fighting, 
I  hope  and  believe. 

''Later  (at  sea) .  I  know  now  what  a  campaign 
is.  I  had  a  suspicion  from  Antwerp.  It  is  con- 
tinual crossing  from  one  place  to  another,  and 


174  RUl^ERT  BROOKE 

back,  over  dreamlike  seas:  anchoring,  or  halting, 
in  the  oddest  places,  for  no  one  knows  or  quite 
cares  how  long:  drifting  on,  at  last,  to  some  other 
equally  unexpected,  equally  out  of  the  way, 
ecjually  odd  spot:  for  all  the  world  like  a  bottle 
in  some  corner  of  the  bay  at  a  seaside  resort. 
Somewhere,  sometimes,  there  is  fighting.  Not 
for  us.  In  the  end,  no  doubt,  our  apparently 
aimless  course  will  drift  us  through,  or  anchor 
us  in,  a  blaze  of  war,  quite  suddenly;  and  as  sud- 
denly swirl  us  out  again.  Meanwhile,  the  laziest 
loitering  lotus-day  1  idled  away  as  a  wanderer  in 
the  South  Seas  was  a  bustle  of  decision  and  pur- 
pose compared  to  a  campaign. 

"One  just  hasn't,  though,  the  time  and  detach- 
ment to  write,  I  find.  But  I've  been  collecting 
a  few  words,  detaching  lines  from  the  ambient 
air,  collaring  one  or  two  of  the  golden  phrases 
that  a  certain  wind  blows  from  (will  the  Censor 
let  me  say?)  Olympus,  across  these  purple  seas." 


VIII 

Of  the  'golden  phrases,'  only  the  merest  frag- 
ments remain.  He  must  have  made  up  more  in 
his  head  than  he  wrote  down,  for  his  last  letter 


A  MEMOIR  175 

to  me  implies  a  good  deal  more  than  there  is. 
"The  first  few  days  afloat  I  was  still  convalescent. 
So  I  could  lie  in  my  bunk  and  read  and  write  in 
a  delicious  solitude  all  day.  I  actually  did  jot 
down  a  line  or  two.  Nothing  yet  complete  (ex- 
cept a  song,  worthless  alone,  for  Denis  to  put 
lovely  notes  around)  ;  but  a  sonnet  or  two  almost 
done;  and  the  very  respectable  and  shapely 
skeleton  of  an  ode-threnody.    All  of  which  shall 

travel  to  you  if  and  when  they  are  done 

I  must  go  and  censor  my  platoon's  letters.  My 
long  poem  is  to  be  about  the  existence — and  non- 
locality — of  England.  And  it  contains  the  line 
— 'In  Avons  of  the  heart  her  rivers  run.'  Lovely, 
isn't  it?" 

There  is  only  a  small  black  note-book,  from 
which  I  will  put  together  what  I  can.  There  will 
be  found  in  the  appendix  the  little  song  called 
The  Dance,  mentioned  in  the  letter;  and  a  frag- 
ment which  is  almost  his  only  attempt  at  blank 
verse — though  even  here  rhyme  steals  in  towards 
the  end.  Here  are  the  scraps  which  seem  to  be- 
long to  the  'ode-threnody'  on  England: 

All  tilings  are  written  in  tlie  mind. 
There  the  sure  liills  have  station;  and  the  wind 
Blows  in  that  plaeeless  air. 

And  there  the  white  and  golden  birds  go  flying; 
And  the  stars  wheel  and  shine;  and  woods  are  fair; 


176  RUPERT  BROOKE 

The  light  upon  the  snow  is  there; 

and  in  that  nowhere  move 
The  trees  and  hills  ^  and  waters  that  we  love. 

And  she  for  whom  we  die,  she  the  undying 

Mother  of  men 

England ! 

«      -N-      «■ 

In  Avons  of  the  heart  her  rivers  run. 

*  *     * 

She  is  with  all  we  have  loved  and  found  and  known. 

Closed  in  the  little  nowhere  of  the  brain. 

Only,  of  all  our  dreams, 

Not  the  poor  heap  of  dust  and  stone, 

This  local   earth,  set  in  terrestrial  streams. 

Not  this  man,  giving  all  for  gold. 

Nor  that  who  has  found  evil  good,  nor  these 

Blind  millions,  bought  and  sold  .  .  . 

*  *     ♦ 

She  is  not  here,  or  now — 

She  is  here,  and  now,  yet  nowhere — 

We  gave  her  birth,  who  bore  us — 

Our  wandering  feet  have  sought,  but  never  found  her — 

She  is  built  a  long  way  off — 

She,  though  all  men  be  traitors,  not  betrayed — 

Wliose  soil  is  love,  and  her  stars  justice,  she — 

Gracious  with  flowers, 

And  robed  and  glorious  in  the  sea.* 

*  *     * 

*  The  word  'hands'  is  written  here,  I  think,  by  mistake  for 
'hills.'  Compare  'the  trees  and  waters  and  the  hills'  in  his  early 
poem.  The  Charm. 

•This  last  set  of  lines,  or  rather  jottings,  is  not  written  as  if 
they  were  meant  to  be  consecutive. 


A  MEMOIR  177 

She  was  in  his  eyes,  but  he  could  not  see  her. 
And  he  was  England,  but  he  knew  her  not. 

There  are  fragments  of  other  poems ;  two  about 
the  expedition: 

They  say  Achilles  in  the  darkness  stirred. 

And  Hector,  his  old  enemy. 

Moved    the    great   shades    that   were    his    limbs.      They 

heard 
More  than  Olympian  thunder  on  the  sea". 
*     *     * 

Death  and  Sleep 
Bear  many  a  young  Sarpedon  home. 

And  this,  headed  'Queen  Elizabeth': 

And  Priam  and  his  fifty  sons 
Wake  all  amazed,  and  hear  the  guns. 
And  shake  for  Troy  again. 

Then  there  is  this: — 

'When  Nobby  tried,'  the  stokers  say, 

'To  stop  a  shrapnel  with  his  belly, 
He  away. 

He  left  a  lump  of  bleeding  jelly.' 
But  he  went  out,  did  Nobby  Clark  ^ 
Upon  the  illimitable  dark. 
Out  of  the  fields  where  soldiers  stray. 

Beyond  parades,  beyond  reveille. 

*  All  sailors  whose  name  is  Clark  are  nick-named  Nobby.     No 
one  knows  why. 


178  RUPERT  BROOKE 

This  is  for  one  of  the  sonnets: 

The  poor  scrap  of  a  song  that  some  man  tried 

Down  in  the  troop-decks  forrard,  brought  again 

The  day  you  sang  it  first,  on  a  hill-side, 

With  April  in  the  wind  and  in  the  brain. 

And  the  woods  were  gold;  and  youth  was  in  our  hands. 

*  *     * 

Oh  lovers  parted. 
Oh  all  you  lonely  over  all  the  world. 
You  that  look  out  at  morning  empty-hearted. 
Or  you,  all  night  turning  uncomforted 

*  *     * 

AVould  God,  would  God,  you  could  be  comforted. 

*  *     * 

Eyes  that  weep. 
And  a  long  time  for  love;  and,  after,  sleep. 

There  are  lines  of  a  poem  about  evening,  in 
which  he  recurs  to  the  hares  in  the  Grantchester 
cornfields : 

And  daylight,  like  a  dust,  sinks  through  the  air. 
And  drifting,  golds  the  ground  .  .  . 

A  lark, 
A  voice  in  heaven,  in  fading  deeps  of  light, 
Drops,  at  length,  home. 

*  *     * 

A  wind  of  night,  shy  as  the  young  hare 
That  steals  even  now  out  of  the  corn  to  play, 
Stirs  the  pale  river  once,  and  creeps  away. 


A  MEMOIR  179 

And  of  an  elegy : 

The  feet  that  ran  with  mine  have  found  their  goal, 
The  eyes  that  met  my  eyes  liave  looked  on  night. 
The  firm  limbs  are  no  more;  gone  back  to  earth. 
Easily  mingling  .  .  . 

What  he  is  yet, 
Not  living,  lives,  hath  place  in  a  few  minds  .  .  . 

He  wears 
The  ungathered  blossom  of  quiet;  stiller  he 
Than  a  deep  well  at  noon,  or  lovers  met; 
Than  sleep,  or  the  heart  after  wrath.     He  is 
The  silence  following  great  words  of  peace. 

That  is  all. 

On  the  17th  of  April  thej'-  landed  at  Scyros. 
Arthur  Asqiiith  described  it  to  his  sister  before 
anything  had  happened:  "This  island  is  more 
mountainous  than  Lemnos,  and  more  sparsely  in- 
habited. It  is  like  one  great  rock-garden  of 
white  and  pinkish-white  marble,  with  small  red 
poppies  and  every  sort  of  wildflower;  in  the 
gorges  ilex,  dwarf  holly,  and  occasional  groups  of 
olives;  and  everywhere  the  smell  of  thyme  (or  is 
it  sage?  or  wild  mint?).  Our  men  kill  adders 
and  have  fun  with  big  tortoises.  The  water  near 
the  shore,  where  the  bottom  is  white  marble,  is 
more  beautifully  green  and  blue  than  I  have  ever 
seen  it  anywhere," 


180  RUPERT  BROOKE 

Here  then,  in  the  island  where  Theseus  was 
buried,  and  whence  the  young  Achilles  and  the 
young  Pyrrhus  were  called  to  Troy,  Rupert 
Brooke  died  and  was  buried  on  Friday,  the  23rd 
of  April,  the  day  of  Shakespeare  and  of  St. 
George. 

He  seemed  quite  well  till  Tuesday  the  20th, 
when  there  was  a  Divisional  Field-day,  and  he 
went  to  bed  tired  immediately  after  dinner.  On 
Wednesday  he  stayed  in  bed  with  pains  in  his 
back  and  head ;  and  a  swelling  on  his  lip ;  but  no 
anxiety  was  felt  till  the  evening,  when  he  had  a 
temperature  of  103.  Next  morning  he  was  much 
worse;  the  swelling  had  increased,  and  a  consul- 
tation was  held.  The  diagnosis  was  acute  blood- 
poisoning,  and  all  hope  was  given  up.  It  was 
decided  to  move  him  to  the  French  hospital-ship 
Duguay-Tromn  which  happened  to  be  at  Scyros. 
When  he  was  told  this,  his  one  anxiety  was  lest 
he  should  have  difficulty  in  rejoining  his  bat- 
talion. They  reassured  him,  and  he  seemed  to 
be  content.  Soon  afterwards  he  became  coma- 
tose; and  there  does  not  seem  to  have  been  any 
moment  when  he  can  have  realised  that  he  was 
dying.  The  rest  of  the  story  shall  be  told  in  the 
words  of  the  letter  which  Denis  Browne  wrote 
me  on  the  25th  from  the  transport. 

"In  less  than  half  an  hour  we  had  carried  him 


^A  MEMOIR  181 

down  into  a  pinnace  and  taken  him  straight 
aboard  the  Diiguaij-Troiiin.  They  put  him  in 
the  best  cabin,  on  the  sun-deck.  Ever\i;hing  was 
very  roomy  and  comfortable;  they  had  every 
modern  apphance  and  the  surgeons  did  all  that 
they  possibly  could/  Oc  and  I  left  him  about  6 
when  we  coidd  do  nothing  more,  and  went  to  the 
Franconia,  where  we  sent  a  wireless  message  to 
the  Admiralty.^  Next  morning  Oc  and  I  went 
over  to  see  what  we  could  do,  and  found  him  much 
weaker.  There  was  nothing  to  be  done,  as  he 
was  quite  unconscious  and  they  were  busy  trjang 
all  the  devices  they  could  think  of  to  give  him 
ease.  Not  that  he  was  suffering,  for  he  was 
barely  conscious  all  Thursday  (he  just  said 
'Hallo'  when  I  went  to  lift  him  out  into  the  pin- 
nace) ,  and  on  Friday  he  w^as  not  conscious  at  all 
up  to  the  very  last,  and  felt  no  pain  whatever. 
At  2  the  head  surgeon  told  me  he  was  sinking. 
Oc  went  off  to  see  about  arrangements,  and  I 
sat  with  Rupert.    At  4  o'clock  he  became  weaker, 

*  "I  do  want  you  to  feel,"  Browne  wrote  to  Mrs.  Brooke,  "that 
nothing  was  left  undone  that  could  alleviate  his  condition  or  pro- 
long his  life.  Nothing,  however,  all  the  doctors,  French  and  Eng- 
lish, assured  me,  could  have  helped  him  to  fight  his  disease,  excej)t 
a  strong  constitution.  And  his  was  .so  enfeebled  by  illness  as  to 
make  the  contest  an  unequal  one.  They  gave  us  hardly  any  hope 
from  the  first." 

'The  telegrams  were  received  as  if  from  Lemnos,  and  as  there 
was  no  reason  to  suppose  otherwise  it  was  assumed,  and  published, 
that  he  had  died  there. 


182  RUPERT  BROOKE 

and  at  4.46  he  died,  with  the  sun  shining  all 
round  his  cabin,  and  the  cool  sea-breeze  blowing 
through  the  door  and  the  shaded  windows.  No 
one  could  have  wished  a  quieter  or  a  calmer  end 
than  in  that  lovely  bay,  shielded  by  the  moun- 
tains and  fragrant  with  sage  and  thyme. ^ 

"We  buried  him  the  same  evening  in  an  olive- 
grove  where  he  had  sat  with  us  on  Tuesday — one 
of  the  loveliest  places  on  this  earth,  with  grey- 
green  olives  round  him,  one  weeping  above  his 
head;  the  ground  covered  with  flowering  sage, 
bluish-grey,  and  smelling  more  delicious  than  any 
flower  I  know.  The  path  up  to  it  from  the  sea 
is  narrow  and  difficult  and  very  stony ;  it  runs  by 
the  bed  of  a  dried-up  torrent.  We  had  to  post 
men  with  lamps  every  twenty  yards  to  guide  the 
bearers.  He  was  carried  up  from  the  boat  by  his 
A  Company  petty  officers,  led  by  his  platoon- 
sergeant  Saunders;  and  it  was  with  enormous 
difficulty  that  they  got  the  coffin  up  the  narrow 
way.  The  journey  of  a  mile  took  two  hours.  It 
was  not  till  11  that  I  saw  them  coming  (I  had 
gone  up  to  choose  the  place,  and  with  Freyberg 
and  Charles  Lister  I  turned  the  sods  of  his  grave; 
we  had  some  of  his  platoon  to  dig) .  First  came 
one  of  his  men  carrying  a  great  white  wooden 

'  This  sentence  is  from  the  letter  to  Mrs.  Brooke, 


A  MEMOIR  183 

cross  with  his  name  painted  on  it  in  black;  then 
the  firing-party,  commanded  by  Patrick;  and 
then  the  coffin,  followed  by  our  officers,  and  Gen- 
eral Paris  and  one  or  two  others  of  the  Brigade. 
Think  of  it  all  under  a  clouded  moon,  with  the 
three  mountains  ^  around  and  behind  us,  and 
those  divine  scents  everywhere.  We  lined  his 
grave  with  all  the  Jflowers  we  could  find,  and 
Quilter  set  a  wreath  of  olive  on  the  coffin.  The 
funeral  service  was  very  simply  said  by  the  Chap- 
lain, and  after  the  Last  Post  the  little  lamp-lit 
procession  went  once  again  down  the  narrow  path 
to  the  sea. 

"Freyberg,  Oc,  I,  Charles  and  Cleg  [Kelly] 
stayed  behind  and  covered  the  grave  with  great 
pieces  of  white  marble  which  were  lying  every- 
where about.  Of  the  cross  at  the  head  you  know; 
it  was  the  large  one  that  headed  the  procession. 
On  the  back  of  it  our  Greek  interpreter  wrote  in 
pencil : 

6  8ov\os  Tov  GeoD 
AvdvTro\oxo.yos  TOV 
' AyyXiKOV  vavTLKOv 

inreXevdepujaeu:^  t^S 
Kui>'  TTOvXeojs  aird 

*  Their  names  are  Paphko,  Komaro,  and  Khokilas. 

*  Here  lies  the  servant  of  God,  SulvLicutt-nant  in  the  English 
Navy,  who  died  for  the  deliverance  of  Constantinople  from  the 
Turks. 


184  RUPERT  BROOKE 

At  his  feet  was  a  small  wooden  cross  sent  by  his 
platoon.  We  could  not  see  the  grave  again,  as 
we  sailed  from  Scyros  next  morning  at  6." 

The  same  friend  wrote  to  Mrs.  Brooke:  "No 
words  of  mine  can  tell  you  the  sorrow  of  those 
whom  he  has  left  behind  him  here.  No  one  of  us 
knew  him  without  loving  him,  whether  they  knew 
him  for  ten  years,  as  I  did,  or  for  a  couple  of 
months  as  others.  His  brother  officers  and  his 
men  mourn  him  very  deeply.  But  those  who 
knew  him  chiefly  as  a  poet  of  the  rarest  gifts, 
the  briglitest  genius,  know  that  the  loss  is  not  only 
yours  and  ours,  but  the  world's.  And  beyond 
his  genius  there  was  that  infinitely  lovable  soul, 
that  stainless  heart  whose  earthly  death  can  only 
be  the  beginning  of  a  true  immortality. 

"To  his  friends  Rupert  stood  for  something  so 
much  purer,  greater,  and  nobler  than  ordinary 
men  that  his  loss  seems  more  explicable  than 
theirs.  He  has  gone  to  where  he  came  from ;  but 
if  anyone  left  the  world  richer  by  passing  through 
it,  it  was  he." 

Next  morning  the  Grantully  Castle  sailed  for 
the  Gallipoli  Peninsula.  Within  six  weeks,  of 
the  officers  named  in  Denis  Browne's  letter,  he 
and  Colonel  Quilter  were  dead,  and  all  but  one 
of  the  others  had  been  wounded.  Kelly,  Lister, 
and  Shaw-Stewart  have  since  been  killed. 


A  MEMOIR  185 

Winston  Churchill  wrote  in  the  Times  of  April 
26th:  "Rupert  Brooke  is  dead.  A  telegram  from 
the  Admiral  at  Lemnos  tells  us  that  this  life  has 
closed  at  the  moment  when  it  seemed  to  have 
reached  its  springtime.  A  voice  had  become  au- 
dible, a  note  had  been  struck,  more  true,  more 
thrilling,  more  able  to  do  justice  to  the  nobility 
of  our  youth  in  arms  engaged  in  this  present  war, 
than  any  other — more  able  to  express  their 
thoughts  of  self-surrender,  and  with  a  power  to 
carry  comfort  to  those  who  watched  them  so  in- 
tently from  afar.  The  voice  has  been  swiftly 
stilled.  Only  the  echoes  and  the  memory  remain ; 
but  they  will  linger. 

"During  the  last  few  months  of  his  life,  months 
of  preparation  in  gallant  comradeship  and  open 
air,  the  poet-soldier  told  with  all  the  simple  force 
of  genius  the  sorrow  of  youth  about  to  die,  and 
the  sure  triumphant  consolations  of  a  sincere  and 
valiant  spirit.  He  expected  to  die;  he  was  will- 
ing to  die  for  the  dear  England  whose  beauty 
and  majesty  he  knew;  and  he  advanced  towards 
the  brink  in  perfect  serenity,  with  absolute  con- 
viction of  the  rightness  of  his  country's  cause, 
and  a  heart  devoid  of  hate  for  fellow-men. 

"The  thoughts  to  which  he  gave  expression  in 
the  very  few  incomparable  war  sonnets  which  he 
has  left  behind  will  be  shared  by  many  thou- 


186  RUPERT  BROOKE 

sands  of  young  men  moving  resolutely  and 
blithely  forward  into  this,  the  hardest,  the  cruel- 
lest, and  the  least-rewarded  of  all  the  wars  that 
men  have  fought.  They  are  a  whole  history  and 
revelation  of  Rupert  Brooke  himself.  Joyous, 
fearless,  versatile,  deeply  instructed,  with  classic 
symmetry  of  mind  and  body,  he  was  all  that  one 
would  wish  England's  noblest  sons  to  be  in  days 
when  no  sacrifice  but  the  most  precious  is  ac- 
ceptable, and  the  most  precious  is  that  which  is 
most  freely  proffered." 

•  •■••• 

"Coming  from  Alexandria  yesterday,"  Denis 
Browne  wrote  to  me  on  June  2nd,  two  days  be- 
fore his  own  death,  "we  passed  Rupert's  island 
at  sunset.  The  sea  and  sky  in  the  East  were 
grey  and  misty;  but  it  stood  out  in  the  West, 
black  and  immense,  with  a  crimson  glowing  halo 
round  it.  Every  colour  had  come  into  the  sea 
and  sky  to  do  him  honour;  and  it  seemed  that 
the  island  must  ever  be  shining  with  his  glory 
that  we  buried  there." 


APPENDIX 


Note 

The  Appendix  contains:  (1)  the  only  two  co- 
herent fragments  found  in  the  notebook  v^xich 
he  used  in  the  last  month  of  his  life  (see  Memoir, 
page  175) ;  a  little  song,  written,  I  think,  on  his 
travels;  and  a  poem,  dating  probably  from  1912, 
which  for  some  reason  he  left  unrevised,  but 
which  I  print  for  the  sake  of  the  characteristic 
image  in  the  first  stanza:  (2)  a  few  'lighter' 
poems  which  I  dare  say  he  would  have  printed 
on  their  merits  if  he  had  published  a  volume  in 
which  they  would  not  have  been  out  of  key.  Two 
of  these,  the  "Letter  to  a  Live  Poet"  and  "The 
Little  Dog's  Day,"  were  \vritten  for  Westmin- 
ster Gazette  competitions,  in  which  they  won 
prizes. 

E.M. 


FRAGMENT 

I  strayed  about  the  deck,  an  hour,  to-night 
Under  a  cloudy  moonless  sky ;  and  peeped 
In  at  the  windows,  watched  my  friends  at  table. 
Or  playing  cards,  or  standing  in   the  doorway, 
Or  coming  out  into  the  darkness.     Still 
No  one  could  see  me. 

I  would  have  thought  of  them 
— Heedless,  within  a  week  of  battle — in  pity. 
Pride  in  their  strength  and  in  the  weight  and  firmness 
And  link'd  beauty  of  bodies,  and  pity  that 
This  gay  machine  of  splendour  'Id  soon  be  broken. 
Thought  little  of,  pashed,  scattered.  .  .  . 

Only,  always, 
I  could  but  see  them — against  the  lamplight — pass 
Like  coloured  shadows,  thinner  than  filmy  glass, 
Slight  bubbles,  fainter  than  the  wave's  faint  light. 
That  broke  to  phosphorus  out  in  the  night, 
Perishing  things  and  strange  ghosts — soon  to  die 
To  other  ghosts — this  one,  or  that,  or  I. 

April,  1915. 


189 


19U  RUPERT  BROOKE 


THE  DANCE 

A  Song 

As  the  Wind,  and  as  the  Wind, 

In  a  corner  of  the  way. 
Goes  stepping,  stands  twirling. 
Invisibly,  comes  whirling. 
Bows  before,  and  skips  behind. 
In  a  grave,  an  endless  play — 

So  my  Heart,  and  so  my  Heart, 

Following  where  your  feet  have  gone. 
Stirs  dust  of  old  dreams  there; 
He  turns  a  toe;  he  gleams  there. 
Treading  you  a  dance  apart. 
But  you  see  not.     You  pass  on. 

April,  1915. 

SONG 

The  way  of  love  was  thus. 
He  was  born  one  winter  mom 
With  hands  delicious. 
And  it  was  well  with  us. 

Love  came  our  quiet  way. 
Lit  pride  in  us,  and  died  in  us. 
All  in  a  winter's  day. 
There  is  no  more  to  say. 

1913    (?). 


APPENDIX  191 

SOMETIMES  EVEN  NOW  .  .  . 

Sometimes  even  now   I   may 

Stral   a   prisoner's   holiday, 

Slip,  when  all  is  worst,  the  bands. 

Hurry  back,  and  duck  beneath 
Time's  old  tyrannous  groping  hands. 

Speed  away  with  laughing  breath 
Back  to  all  I'll  never  know. 
Back  to  3'ou,  a  year  ago. 

Truant  tlure    from   Time  and    Pain, 
What  I  had,  I  find  again: 
Sunlight  in  the  boughs  above. 

Sunlight  in  your  hair  and  dress. 
The  Hands  too  proud  for  all  but  Love, 

The  Lips  of  utter  kindliness. 
The  Heart  of  bravery  swift  and  clean 

Where  the  best  was  safe,  I  knew. 
And  laughter  in  the  gold  and  green, 

And  song,  and  friends,  and  ever  you 
With  smiling  and  familiar  eyes, 

You — but  friendly:  you — but  true. 

And  Innocence  accounted  wise. 

And  Faith  the  fool,  the  pitiable. 
Love  so  rare,  one  would  swear 

All  of  earth  for  ever  well — 
Careless  lips  and  flying  hair. 

And  little  things   I  may  not  tell. 

It  does  but  double  the  heart-ache 
When  I  wake,  when  I  wake. 
1912(.?). 


192  RUPERT  BROOKE 


SONNET:  IN  TIME  OF  REVOLT 

The  Thing  must  End.     I  am  no  boy!     I  am 
No  boy!  !  being  twenty-one.     Uncle,  you  make 
A  great  mistake,  a  very  great  mistake, 

In  chiding  me   for  letting  slip  a  'Damn!' 

WTiat's  more,  you  called  me  'Mother's  one  ewe  lamb,' 
Bade  me  'refrain  from  swearing — for  her  sake — 
Till  I'm  grown  up'  .  .  .  — By  God!  I  think  you  take 

Too  much  upon  you,  Uncle  William ! 

You  say  I  am  your  brother's  only  son. 

I  know  it.     And,  'What  of  it?'  I  reply. 

My  heart's  resolved.     Something  must  be  done. 

So  shall  I  curb,  so  baffle,  so  suppress 

This  too  avuncular  officiousness. 

Intolerable  consangninity. 

January,  1908. 


A  LETTER  TO  A  LIVE  POET 

Sir,  since  the  last  Elizabethan  died. 

Or,  rather,  that  more  Paradisal  muse, 

Blind  with  much  light,  passed  to  the  light  more  glorious 

Or  deeper  blindness,  no  man's  hand,  as  thine. 

Has,  on  the  world's  most  noblest  chord  of  song, 

Struck  certain  magic  strains.     Ears  satiate 

With  the  clamorous,  timorous  whisperings  of  to-day, 


APPENDIX  193 

Thrilled  to  perceive  once  more  the  spacious  voice 

And  serene  utterance  of  old.     We  heard 

— With  rapturous  breath  half-held,  as  a  dreamer  dreams 

Who  dares  not  know  it  dreaming,  lest  he  wake — 

The  odorous,  amorous   style  of  poetry, 

The  melancholy  knocking  of  those  lines, 

The  long,  low  soughing  of  pentameters, 

— Or  the  sharp  of  rhyme  as  a  bird's  cry — 

And  the  innumerable  truant  polysyllables 

Multitudinously  twittering  like  a  bee. 

Fulfilled  our  hearts  were  with  that  music  then, 

And  all  the  evenings  sighed  it  to  the  dawn. 

And  all  the  lovers  heard  it  from  all  the  trees. 

All  of  the  accents  upon  all  the  norms ! 

— And  ah !  the  stress  on  the  penultimate ! 

We  never  knew  blank  verse  could  have  such  feet. 

WTiere  is  it  now.''     Oh,  more  than  ever,  now, 

I  sometimes  think  no  poetry  is  read 

Save  where  some  sepulturcd  Caesura  bled. 

Royally  incarnadining  all  the  line. 

Is  the  imperial  iamb  laid  to  rest. 

And  the  young  trochee,  having  done  enough? 

Ah !  turn  again !     Sing  so  to  us,  who  are  sick 
Of  seeming-simple  rhymes,  bizarre  emotions. 
Decked  in  the  simple  verses  of  the  day, 
Infinite  meaning  in  a  little  gloom, 
Irregular  thoughts  in   stanzas   regular. 
Modern  despair  in  antique  metres,  myths 
Incomprehensible  at  evening. 
And  symbols  that  mean  nothing  in  the  dawn. 


194  RUPERT  BROOKE 

The  slow  lines  swell.     The  new  style  sighs.     The  Celt 
Moans  round  with  many  voices. 

God !  to  see 
Gaunt  anapaests  stand  up  out  of  the  verse, 
Combative  accents,  stress  where  no  stress  should  be, 
Spondee  on  spondee,  iamb  on  choriamb, 
The  thrill  of  all  the  tribrachs  in  the  world. 
And  all  the  vowels  rising  to  the  E  ! 
To  hear  the  blessed  mutter  of  those  verbs. 
Conjunctions  passionate  toward  each  other's  arms. 
And  epithets  like  amaranthine  lovers 
Stretching  luxuriously  to  the  stars, 
All  prouder  pronouns  than  the  dawn,  and  all 
The  thunder  of  the  trumpets  of  the  noun ! 

January^  1911. 


FRAGMENT  ON  PAINTERS 

There  is  an  evil  which  that  Race  attaints 

^^^lo  represent  God's  World  with  oily  paints. 

Who  mock  the  Universe,  so  rare  and  sweet. 

With  spots  of  colour  on  a  canvas  sheet. 

Defile  the  Lovely  and  insult  the  Good 

By  scrawling  upon  little  bits  of  v/ood. 

They'd  snare  the  moon,  and  catch  the  immortal  sun 

With  madder  brown  and  pale  vermilion. 

Entrap  an  English  evening's  magic  hush  .  .  . 


APPENDIX  195 


THE  TRUE  BEATITUDE 

They  say,  when  the  Great  Prompter's  hand  shall  ring 
Down  the  last  curtain  upon  earth  and  sea, 
All  the  Good  Mimes  will  have  eternity 

To  praise  their  Author,  worship  love  and  sing; 

Or  to  the  walls  of  Heaven  wandering 

Look  down  on  those  damned  for  a  fretful  d — '■ — , 
Mock  them   (all  theologians  agree 

On  this  reward  for  virtue),  laugh,  and  fling 

New  sulphur  on  the  sin-incarnadined  .  .  . 

Ah,  Love!  still  temporal,  and  still  atmospheric, 
Teleologically   unperturbed. 
We  share  a  peace  by  no  divine  divined, 

An  earthly  garden  hidden  from  any  cleric. 
Untrodden  of  God,  by  no  Eternal  curbed. 

1913. 


SONNET  REVERSED 

Hand  trembling  towards  hand ;  the  amazing  lights 
Of  heart  and  eye.     They  stood  on  supreme  heights. 

Ah,  the  delirious  weeks  of  honeymoon ! 

Soon  they  returned,  and,  after  strange  adventures, 
Settled  at  Balhani  by  the  end  of  June. 

Their  money  was  in  Can.  Pacs.  B.  Debentures, 


196  RUPERT  BROOKE 

And  in  Antofagastas.     Still  he  went 

Cityward  daily;  still  she  did  abide 
At  home.     And  both  were  really  quite  content 

With  work  and  social  pleasures.     Then  they  died. 
They  left  three  children  (besides  George,  who  drank) 

The  eldest  Jane,  who  married   Mr.   Bell, 
William,  the  head-clerk  in  the  County  Bank, 

And   Henry,  a   stock-broker,  doing  well. 

LuLWORTH,   1,  January,   IQH. 


THE  LITTLE  DOG'S  DAY 

All  in  the  town  were  still  asleep. 

When  the  sun  came  up  with  a  shout  and  leap. 

In  the  lonely  streets  unseen  by  man, 

A  little  dog  danced.     And  the  day  began. 

All  his  life  he'd  been  good,  as  far  as  he  could. 
And  the  poor  little  beast  had  done  all  that  he  should. 
But  this  morning  he  swore,  by  Odin  and  Thor 
And  the  Canine  Valhalla — he'd  stand  it  no  more ! 

So  his  prayer  he  got  granted — to  do  just  what  he  wanted, 

Prevented  by  none,  for  the  space  of  one  day. 

'Jam  incipiebo,^  sedere  facebo,'  ^ 

In  dog-Latin  he  quoth,  'Euge!  sophos!  hurray!' 


*  Now  we're  off. 

*  I'll  make  them  sit  up. 


APPENDIX  197 

He  fought  with  the  he-dogs,  and  winked  at  the  she-dogs, 
A  thing  that  had  never  been  heard  of  before. 
'For  the  stigma  of  gluttony,  I  care  not  a  button  !*  he 
Cried,  and  ate  all  he  could  swallow — and  more. 

He  took  sinewy  lumps  from  the  shins  of  old  frumps, 
And  mangled  the  errand-boys — when  he  could  get  'em. 
He  shammed  furious  rabies,^  and  bit  all  the  babies,^ 
And  followed  the  cats  tip  the  trees,  and  then  ate  'em! 

They  thought  'twas  the  devil  was  holding  a  revel. 
And  sent  for  the  parson  to  drive  him  away; 
For  the  town  never  knew  such  a  hullabaloo 
As  that  little  dog  raised — till  the  end  of  that  day. 

When  the  blood-red  sun  had  gone  burning  down. 
And  the  lights  were  lit  in  the  little  town. 
Outside,  in  the  gloom  of  the  twilight  grey. 
The  little  dog  died  when  he'd  had  his  day. 

July,   1907. 
*  Pronounce  either  to  suit  rhyme. 


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